
Class. 
Boole 






Copyright^ .. 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



THE HIGHWAY TO LEADEKSHIP 



The 
Highway to Leadership 



BY 
MARGARET SLATTERY 



THE PILGRIM PRESS 

(Department of Educational Publications) 

BOSTON CHICAGO 






Copyright 1920 
By A. W. FELL 



THE PILGRIM PRESS 
BOSTON 



G>C!.A576987 



"Out of the shadows of the past, 
We move to a diviner light; 
For nothing that is wrong can last, 
Nothing's immortal but the Right.' 9 



CONTENTS 



I. A Leader — One Who Leads 

II. The Eyes That See 

III. The Ears That Hear .... 

IV. The Heart That Feels . . . 
V. The Mind That Interprets . . 

VI. The Practice That Prepares . 

VII. The Courage That Faces Fact 

VIII. The Patience That Teaches 

IX. The Will That Persists . . . 

X. The Confidence That Dares Dream 



3 

17 

31 

45 

59 

75 

89 

103 

117 

131 



I. A Leader- 
One Who Leads 



Chapter One 
A LEADER— ONE WHO LEADS 

At last spring had come to the Park. It had 
been long in coming. Perhaps that was why 
it was greeted with such exuberant joy in the 
section set apart as a playground. Squeals 
of delight came from the group at the far end, 
near the lilac bushes, where " three deep" was 
in progress. Above all the babel of sounds 
came snatches of the words that clear soprano 
voices were chanting, "Go in and out the win- 
dow. ... Go stand behind your lover/' . . . 
There was a belated game of marbles being 
played in the only spot where the sun had not 
yet dried the recent rains — mud and marbles are 
so hard to separate- — who can say why? Across 
the bridge the older girls were playing volley- 
ball. But the diamond was the noisiest and 
most popular spot, although for a few moments 
a ring-tossing game had caused a dispute that 
rivaled even the ball game in intensity and 
interest. 

I wandered about from one group to an- 
other and in every group I found a child who 
stood out, who directed, who led. There was 



\s 



u- 



THE HIGHWAY TO LEADERSHIP 

one girl in the volley-ball group whose deci- 
sions were as the laws of the Medea and Per- 
sians. Some disagreed, but the majority was 
with her every time. She was a dark-eyed, 
intense creature, about thirteen years old. She 
was without an atom of self-consciousness. The 
other girls looked at me, she looked at them 
and called them back to attention — "Here you, 
Jean Roper, watch the ball!" Jean did. 

In the group where they were patiently going 
"in and out the window,' ' one little girl said 
she was not going to play any more. There was 
general dismay. Then leadership became ap- 
parent. A girl of ten, auburn-haired, alert, 
keen, singing with abandon, suddenly stopped. 
"You've got to play, Marie," she said. "It 
will spoil the game. You've got to finish it. 
We're going round four times more." With 
a most winning smile she added, "After that 
you choose what we'll play, huh?" The re- 
monstrant agreed. 

To watch the leaders in the ball game was 
most fascinating. The boy who led the cheer- 
ing had not been commissioned cheer leader, 
but he was one, as the ear-splitting shouts tes- 
tified. Now and then he turned a complete 
somersault as a token of approval. But the 
leader in the game itself was a quiet boy. He 
was taller than most of the others, a lanky, 

4 



A LEADER 

homely boy with a way of saying things. They 
called him Bumps. When all the others had 
shouted themselves hoarse, he spoke — slowly. 
A moment of quiet followed. Then the babel 
again. One lad asked, "Who made you um- 
pire? " Bumps answered with, "Aw, come on, 
fellars, play ball," and the questioner suc- 
cumbed and played. 

On every playground in America, in the 
streets of cities, at parties where games are 
undirected, in clubs, in class meetings, in reci- 
tations, when the men-and-women-to-be are 
still very young, leadership reveals itself. 

I wish I might have seen Washington, Lin- 
coln, Lee, Foch, Clemenceau, Lloyd George, 
Nitti, Cardinal Mercier, or Herbert Hoover 
at their games. I should like to have observed 
Florence Nightingale, Clara Barton, Edith 
Cavell, Alice Freeman Palmer, Maude Balling- 
ton Booth, Frances Willard, and many an- 
other at play. I am certain that qualities 
revealed in the hard, serious, all-absorbing 
game of life, so fraught with good or ill for 
hosts of their fellows, were there in the early 
days. Life developed them, great moments 
of crisis utilized them. To analyze and tab- 
ulate those qualities fully, to study them, 
emulate them and then make certain that a 
mantle of leadership will fall upon one's own 

5 



THE HIGHWAY TO LEADERSHIP 

shoulders, I believe is impossible. No one 
can promise leadership as a prize or a gift. 
Nevertheless to study those qualities dili- 
gently, in such fashion that one may be able 
to recognize them in the youth about him and 
direct them into right channels, is possible 
and highly important; for leaders who can 
and will lead their fellows over right paths 
to the ultimate goal of the welfare of human- 
ity must be found if mankind is not to lose 
out in the struggle with the things he Jias 
himself created and accepted, not as partners, 
but as masters. In the search for leaders and 
in the effort to inspire and train them, one 
often develops unsuspected qualities of lead- 
ership in himself. For this all may hope. 

When I go back to my observation of chil- 
dren and youth in their varied relationships 
to one another and study the leaders among 
them, I find that invariably the leader has 
knowledge and is constantly seeking more. 
He is faithfully searching out new points of 
the game. A scornful, "Aw, you don't know 
how to do it yourself!" nips in the bud many 
a would-be leader who lacks knowledge, as the 
group turns instinctively to the one it feels 
does know. 

Almost without exception the leader wants 
to play the game. Often he is so consumed 

6 



A LEADER 

with desire for it that he forgets all else. 
The leader of every group I have ever ob- 
served plays with an abandon that leaves no 
room for consciousness of self. He who plays 
to the gallery never keeps, for any length of 
time, his place of leadership. The utter ab- 
sorption in the thing to be done leaves a leader 
oblivious of the gallery. If, by some unusual 
demonstration, he is made conscious of it, the 
effect is but for the moment, all that he is 
returns to the thing to be done. It is the 
combination of knowledge of the goal and an 
abandon of consecration to the purpose to 
reach it that gives to the individual his pull- 
ing power with the group. Without that 
pulling power there can never be true leader- 
ship — a leader leads, he does not drive. The 
qualities of leadership wrongly developed 
create the tyrant. 

It is because to so large an extent the 
natural leaders of groups of men have be- 
come intangible, unapproachable, misinter- 
preted, dehumanized that we have such in- 
dustrial and economic upheaval with lack of 
leadership today. A leader leads; and in 
order to do so he must become a very real, 
living, actual personality to those who are 
to follow. They must feel his presence in the 
game. 

7 



THE HIGHWAY TO LEADERSHIP 

The statement that leaders may be created 
leaves room for doubt; but there is no room 
for doubt that they may be discovered, devel- 
oped and used. In order to meet the great 
emergencies of the war, we attempted to make 
leaders. Some of them never led. We could 
not put into them by any known process the 
qualities that were utterly lacking. They were 
in places of leadership — they did not lead. 
In her hour of need, America discovered that 
in her youth she had much to alarm and dis- 
hearten her, to make her ashamed for past 
negligence; but she found also that she had 
much over which she could rejoice. Countless 
numbers of her youth proved themselves to 
be the stuff from which leaders are developed. 
They had some knowledge and were eager for 
more, they had the abandon of consecration 
necessary to reach the goal, they were able 
to give up everything, to put in everything, 
and to forget themselves. Out of this group, 
in a surprisingly short time, were developed 
leaders who were able truly to lead. 

We need such leaders now. We need them 
even more than from 1914 to 1918 and yet, 
as a nation, we are not as intent upon dis- 
covery and development as we were and as 
we must be if we are to win the greater war 
in which we are now engaged. Every quarter 






A LEADER 

of the globe needs men and women who have 
the knowledge and the consecration of leaders: 
who lead. Both as individual citizens and as 
organized citizens we should be searching for 
those who have th0 qualities of leadership and 
should be putting forth every effort to develop 
them. 

The public school should be discovering and 
developing the leaders of the new day which 
is now emerging from the clouds of the great 
conflict. The public school could do it if it 
were free. It is not free. It is handicapped 
by those who sit in places of leadership but 
do not lead, those whose political ambitions 
and selfish purposes weave shackles that hold 
far-seeing, trained, conscientious men and 
women to the lock-step. Spend a day with 
the figures representing the appropriations of 
the Congress during the past year and see 
how much by comparison has been given to 
the development and training of leaders. 
Spend another day with the appropriations 
of state legislatures and city governments. 
Study the manipulations of those who strive 
for power for personal ends. Note the in- 
creasing sectarian suspicion that blots out 
God and leaves instruction without its highest 
incentives for action. Note the increasing 
prejudice of political parties that, for party 

9 



THE HIGHWAY TO LEADERSHIP 

purposes rather than personal fitness for the 
task, choose the directors of educational 
policies. 

The public school should be the freest agent 
on earth to discover, develop, train and send 
out into life great leaders, and the present 
dearth of leadership is the inevitable result 
of the handicap under which it labors. 

The church should be another organized 
effort to discover and develop leaders. A 
great body of people within the church has 
for years realized the need of leadership and 
recognized the fact that, in common with the 
rest of society, it was failing to meet it. But 
the church did not realize it to the point of 
action, and as a whole it does not realize it 
now. The church does not face fact. If, 
breaking bounds, its pastor does so now and 
then, it pats him on the back and tells him not 
to get excited. " Discussion of such subjects 
makes for discontent, disagreement and lack 
of harmony,' ' said a prosperous, complacent 
churchman to me recently in speaking of his 
pastor's burning words of reproof to the in- 
different in his congregation. Many church 
people think they love and desire peace and 
harmony in the church when they only long 
for ease in Zion! No, the church, as a whole, 
does not face Fact, especially local and specific 

10 






A LEADER 

Fact. Therefore it closes the first open door 
to the discovery of leadership — Facing the 
Facts. 

Of late, there have been most encouraging 
movements within the church looking toward 
organized effort to discover and train leaders. 
If these efforts are not lost in a maze of 
machinery, they will accomplish much in the 
next decade. The great office of the church 
of the present day is to inspire and train for 
service. It has as; >yet failed to grasp the full 
significance and the challenge of its task. To 
search out youth, to discover young men and 
women with the qualities of leadership and so 
inspire them that they will seek opportunity 
for service that is sane, genuine and nation- 
building — no organized group could ask for a 
more fundamental task! 

During the Great Conflict, men and women 
begged for opportunity to serve. They 
eagerly sought the chance to face cold, hunger 
and death, inspired by the great call of the 
hour. When one analyzes the inspiration 
which can lead to such devoted, self-effacing 
abandon in service as was witnessed in every 
battle on land, on sea, or in the air in those 
great days, he finds that it is very complex, 
but that a rich history, a great inheritance, 
high ideals, consciousness of a debt to the 

11 



THE HIGHWAY TO LEADERSHIP 

past and a debt to the future are always among 
its component parts. The church has all these 
to draw upon. The pages of its past and 
present missionary history alone show records 
of leadership of which it can be justly proud. 
More than that, the church has a Person. It 
has a Leader around whom it can rally its 
forces, in whom is the greatest challenge and 
highest idealism of all time. Can it be that 
he has become intangible, unapproachable, 
misinterpreted, misunderstood? Can it be 
that the church has itself missed something 
of the Person? Yes, it has. The church as 
a whole has not accepted the spirit of aban- 
donment of self in service which was the 
passion of its Master. 

"I have now given up everything, severed 
all connection with the things that used to 
hold me down, turned my back on the things 
that used to defeat me. I have thrown all 
I am and all I have into this game. I have 
lost all fear, and hardships mean so little. 
/ ivas never so absolutely happy in my life, 
and for the first time I feel as if I know what 
it means to be a Christian.' ' So wrote a 
young man of twenty-three from the trenches. 
It is no wonder that he became a leader and, 
in a moment of great crisis, saved a serious 
situation. He had caught it — the true, re- 

12 



A LEADER 

ligious motive, the greatest source of inspira- 
tion for unselfish service known to man, the 
deepest source of true leadership. 

If the church could only say it — the church 
as a whole and every individual in it — phrase 
and phrase as he said it, what a wave of in- 
spiration and power would surge through it 
and be registered in serious, patient, unremit- 
ting search for those who have the qualities 
of leadership, with adequate means provided 
to train it and equip it for service! 

The hour has come for the church to mea- 
sure up to the opportunity. Unless it meets 
the demand, the mass of American childhood 
and youth, going into battle with life, un- 
graded, inadequately led, unchallenged by the 
demands of God and the need of men, will 
fail to win those traits of character without 
which neither nation nor society can long 
endure. 

America, today, in common with all the 
world, has many would-be leaders. Some 
have abused their inherent qualities of leader- 
ship and become tyrants — they drive. Some 
have a wrong purpose — self-serving — and they 
have become false guides. Many have lost 
sight of the goal and, serving the moment, 
have lost power. That is why the world} faces 
the crisis. Great problems with but limited 

13 



THE HIGHWAY TO LEADERSHIP 

leadership moan slow progress to victory. 
Because we face the crisis, we must find 
leaders for the days far ahead. Those days 
will be harder because the present days found 
us unprepared. Leaders in embryo were 
present in every group of children playing 
in the Park that spring day. Material for 
leadership we have in abundance. The day 
when we should bend every energy to develop 
it is here. The first stretch on the great high- 
way by which we may hope to achieve success 
is so plain that no individual or organization 
should fail to discover it. It is made up of 
three qualities without which leadership is 
impossible — some knowledge and the hunger 
for more, an abandon of self-effacing conse- 
cration to the purpose, and a real passion 
for the goal. 



Test so-called leaders of the past and present by these qualities. 
Test those who you think have capacity for leadership. 
Test yourself. 



14 



II. The Eyes That 
See 



Chapter Two 
THE EYES THAT SEE 

Eyes that look are very common. They are 
of every color and of every age. But eyes 
that see are exceedingly rare. It is the mul- 
titude of eyes that look but do not see that 
are responsible for the present chaos of the 
world. Eyes that look see things only, they 
do not see men. Eyes that look see self, they 
do not see others. 

If the eyes that looked out upon the world 
during the twenty-five years preceding 1914 
had seen the world at which they looked, the 
story of the Great War would have been post- 
poned for a generation, perhaps need never 
have been written at all. If the majority of 
the eyes that look at the world could see, 
greed and selfishness would not at, the present 
moment be renewing their principles and 
rendering judgments that mean sources of 
friction and disaster for the generation now 
in its cradle. 

If we are to discover and train leaders, or i^ 
if the power of leadership is ever to be de- 
veloped in ourselves, we must teach eyes that 

17 



THE HIGHWAY TO LEADERSHIP 

look how to see. Eyes that see are always 
aware of lh( k human factor. They are un- 
willing to look at a transaction in the light 
of expedience only or to measure its value 
merely in gold. They see in it real oppor- 
tunity for man's true progress, or they find 
in it a handicap for his future; and these as 
a basis determine for them its acceptance or 
rejection. When Lincoln witnessed the sale 
of a black girl on the block as a slave, he saw 
the strong with the weak as his victim, he 
saw the degradation of a human being, he saw 
intelligence taking advantage of ignorance, 
he saw injustice at work. To many another 
man, witness of the same scene, beholding it 
with eyes that look, it meant only another 
clever bargain, a good deal, more gold. When 
William Hohenzollern looked down from his 
armored motor on the hilltop over that scene 
of devastation, ruin, carnage and death, he 
did not see it. The eyes that looked out over 
that terrible scene beheld another step com- 
pleted in the program toward a Prussianized 
world that was to be his. Had his eyes truly 
seen that at which they looked, the picture 
would have driven him mad. When Lincoln 
looked at the human factor he saw man — to 
be taught, trained, helped, set squarely on his 
feet in the path of self-development that would 

18 



THE EYES THAT SEE 

lead to happiness and genuine prosperity. He 
coveted happiness for human folk. When 
William Hohenzollern looked at the human 
factor, he beheld machinery by which he could 
work his will. He coveted power for him- 
self. The leadership of Lincoln was predes- 
tined to succeed because it stood the acid test 
of purpose in dealing with the human factor. 
The falsei leadership of the head of the House 
of Hohenzollern was doomed to final failure 
because it could not meet that tesit. 

Methods by which one! tmay help develop the 
eyes that see in those who reveal qualities of 
leadership are worthy of most earnest study 
by thinking men and women of our day ; for we 
must develop leaders who stand the test, or as 
a nation the greatest days of our history are 
already in the records of the past. 

Before one can hope to develop and train 
eyes that see, he must stimulate his own. The 
best stimulant I know is a generous and un- 
critical spirit. No critic, in the untechnical 
sense of the word, ever really sees. He mea- 
sures the human factor according to his little 
provincial set of rules and praises or con- 
demns. One glorious Sunday afternoon, in 
company with a woman who wants to help solve 
many social problems because she feels that 
means and leisure make it her duty, I went 

19 



THE HIGHWAY TO LEADERSHIP 

to the tenement section of the city. Our call 
was made on a mother who had been very 
ill and, with the help of good food and medi- 
cine, was struggling slowly back to health. 
She had two married daughters, both with 
families and burdens of their own, and one 
fifteen-year-old girl, her only support. My 
friend had never seen this daughter. I had 
seen her before in her workaday clothes, 
but on this balmy, tempting spring day with 
the bluest of skies and a flood of sunshine, 
she was a revelation. She was going to take 
a walk. Her mother surveyed her with proud 
eyes. "I'll be back in time to get you a good 
supper, ma," she said, and kissed her good- 
bye. I did not like the eyes of my friend as 
she looked after the girl, who went out from 
the clean but disorderly, dingy, little room 
without even a hint of beauty in it, wearing 
a dark red cape of extreme cut and cheapest 
material, brown stockings, very thin, and 
bronzed ridiculous little shoes, a pink dress, 
little pink ear-drops, a black straw hat with 
rainbow-colored flowers under which her dark 
hair puffed out conspicuously, a chain of 
colored beads, a very large purse, and a little 
rouge to complete her make-up. When we 
had said good-bye to the mother and reached 
the dark staircase, my friend's restraint left 

20 



THE EYES THAT SEE 

her. "That impossible creature — that girl," 
she said. It was disgust such as only a 
woman who does not see can express in words. 
Of course she did not see the girl. She saw 
ear-drops, beads, shoes, rouge, and a red cape 
with a pink dress ! She did not know the cape 
was bought at a bargain late in the winter. 
How was one to tell then that pink would 
be the fashionable color in the spring and that, 
in the little store of bargains, the one dress 
that would fit} her would be pink? The brown 
shoes were left from the autumn. They had 
new heels and a new gloss, and of course one 
had to have brown stockings to go with the 
shoes, and it could not be helped that brown, 
red and pink were not exactly what she would 
choose. My friend, by the wildest stretch of 
imagination, could not know the joy of getting 
ready for that Sunday afternoon walk or the 
hope of adventure that might possibly come 
before it was over. My friend had not worked 
hard at a monotonous task five and a half 
days that week, cooked for the mother each 
night, and spent Saturday afternoon washing 
and ironing and mending. Besides that, my 
friend was not fifteen and she took first spring 
days as a matter of course. Her eyes were 
altogether holden and she could not see, she 
only looked. That is why she could never 

21 



THE HIGHWAY TO LEADERSHIP 

lead that fifteen-year-old girl anywhere. She 
might drive her for a while if she had au- 
thority, but she could not lead her. 

I saw evidence of the blind eyes again as 
we walked toward the subway, she talking 
sarcastically about the girl. We suddenly 
came upon a young mother sitting on the 
steps of a house in a dark and dirty street. 
A glance through the open door showed a hall 
with bare laths and hanging plaster. But the 
young mother wore a very fashionable, much- 
beaded, very short-sleeved blouse — new. There 
were shining rhinestone buckles on her shoes 
and the baby carriage drawn close to her w 7 as 
very new, the latest pattern, and white. In 
it was a very tiny baby, a mass of lace and 
ruffles. My friend used the same tone she had 
used in speaking of the girl. "Look at that 
baby carriage !" she said. "How long will it 
stay white in a place like this? And that 
baby, did you ever see so much lace? The 
mother's blouse, too! Extravagance every- 
where! It's simply disheartening to try to 
help these people." 

Help them! She cannot help them. She 
doesn't see them. Should one have a black 
baby carriage for one's first baby? When it 
gets hopelessly soiled in years to come, it may 
be painted if one has money then for paint. 

22 



THE EYES THAT SEE 

But a baby born in May with a whole summer 
before it has the right to a white carriage. 
And the slippers and new blouse — what hope- 
ful signs they were — a record of prosperity, 
limited, but there. My friend had tried a 
little Americanization work on this street, but 
it was not a success. As I walked along with 
her I knew why. She looked at the people 
but she did not see them. She could not even 
see that wee baby. No wonder she could not 
lead these people along even the first part of 
the path to true Americanism. No one can 
truly lead until, stimulated by a generous, 
uncritical spirit, his own eyes are opened 
and he sees. His advice about spring ward- 
robes and new baby carriages, about loyalty 
and citizenship and many other things will 
go unheeded if he merely looks. 

When one begins to see, he becomes slowly 
conscious of a passion to make others see. 
He turns to youth. If he is wise, he will 
search out those that have qualities of leader- 
ship and will try to help the frank eyes that 
look with so much interest upon the world to 
see the things at which they are looking. He 
will emphasize the human factor, make it real, 
paint it in such fashion that it will stand out 
above life's machinery, above its gold, above 
the things wrongly termed success. He will 

23 



THE HIGHWAY TO LEADERSHIP 

introduce the human factor to youth in such 
a way that it will become the center of all re- 
ligion, law, commerce and trade. He will so 
present the human factor that, whether it be 
red, brown, black or yellow, it will receive 
just consideration as a man. 

The eyes of youth who show the qualities 
of leadership are easily opened. Their 
jealousies are neither deep nor fixed, their 
prejudices come and go, their sense of fair 
play is keen, their love of adventure makes 
them willing to experiment; so that one who 
sets for himself the task of helping youth to 
see finds much joy in his work. 

It is not a difficult matter to help youth 
analyze what David Livingstone saw when 
he beheld Africa, and what the ivory and 
rubber hunter, the vender of wiiiskies and 
beers looked at and did not see. It is easy 
to help youth outline the difference between 
the eye of Miles Standish looking at the 
American Indian and the seeing eye of William 
Penn. It is easy to make them realize the 
difference between eyes that, seeing, put Yale 
in China and eyes that, merely looking, are 
putting the brewery into China. 

I have listened to many an interesting de- 
bate in a leadership class as to whether cer- 
tain great historical characters looked or saw; 

24 



THE EYES THAT SEE 

and I could witness the opening of youthful 
eyes as the debate progressed. One night a 
youth in his late teens said quietly that he 
thought the Bible had a lot of names of men 
who saw. I found the group too unfamiliar 
with Bible characters to debate forcefully, so 
we chose a half dozen characters to study. 
I have never forgotten how Solomon's glory 
faded in the debate that followed some weeks 
later, and I doubt if any one will fail to re- 
member the fascinating, beautiful girl who, 
when the debate was over, said she had been 
greatly impressed in studying the lives of the 
characters assigned, with the difference be- 
tween them and Christ, between what they 
looked at and what he saw. She said the 
difference in life as they looked at it and 
life as he saw it would influence her whole 
future. Her words went deep into the hearts 
of the boys and girls whom she could so easily 
lead. She had discovered the truth. Jesus 
Christ always saw. The Pharisees and Sad- 
ducees looked. He saw Peter, they looked 
at him — a fisherman from the country, poor, 
unlettered, an unimportant individual, not to 
be glanced at a second time. Jesus saw Peter, 
a prophet, a preacher, a healer, a world force, 
a rock on which he could build. 
If the next generation is to be saved from 

25 



THE HIGHWAY TO LEADERSHIP 

suffering, hunger, misery, desperate struggle 
and possible defeat, the demand that we de- 
velop eyes that see is not to be put aside. 
Eyes that see never falter. In them is the 
far look, the patience that can wait. 

Out in one of the great public schoolyards 
a while ago, a group of boys were going 
through the movements of a semi-military 
setting-up drill. They w r ere the leaders' 
squad and when they had perfected them- 
selves they were each to head a group which 
would go through the drill daily to help 
make and keep them physically fit. 

4 'They are a fine lot, honest, straight, 
clean,' ■ said their coach, "and tomorrow 
they will be ready to lead their squads. 
They are the stuff that ought to make this 
a better world." 

The master of the school smiled. "Every 
one of those boys," he said, "began his edu- 
cation here in our first grade. For eight 
years we've worked hard with them. Your 
words are a reward." The coach went back 
to give the buttons that were to be the badges 
of leadership to the boys, but the master 
stood perfectly still. His eyes seemed glued 
to the group. "What are you looking at?" 
asked the assistant master, standing beside 
him. 

26 



THE EYES THAT SEE 

A long silence and then, "At tomorrow,' ' 
said the master proudly, with a thrill of con- 
fidence in his voice. I turned, looked up into 
those kind, generous, human eyes that see, 
and thanked God. I was again made certain 
that the second stretch on the highway to 
leadership, in small world or a large one, 
must be covered by eyes that see. 



Test so-called leaders of the past and present by the test of " The 
Eyes That See." 

Test those who you think have capacity for leadership. 
Test yourself. 



27 



III. The Ears That 
Hear 



Chaptee Theee 
THE EAES THAT HEAE 

Ears so finely attuned that they catch at the 
source the murmur which one day will become 
a restrained plea and then, if unheeded, a 
wild, mad, mob demand; ears that can catch 
faint whispers from multitudes of souls dis- 
covering and re-discovering the pure joys of 
life; ears that answer to the vibration of 
words, the countless millions of words by 
which humanity seeks to express its high 
hopes and fine dreams as well as its base 
desires and selfish ambitions; ears that are 
alike conscious of the ringing laughter of 
carefree youth and the poignant sobs of de- 
feated manhood — these are the ears that are 
needed in this hour so destitute of great 
leadership and so distraught because undi- 
rected and misdirected men cannot find their 
way. 

One day I sat quiet on the edge of the 
woods while my friend wandered about in its 
deep shadows. " Isn't the song of that thrush 
the most heavenly thing ?" she asked when 
she returned after a half hour or more of 
wandering. I had heard no thrush. I heard 

31 



THE HIGHWAY TO LEADERSHIP 

the bird calls, the soft twitterings and now 
and then a song, but they made no real im- 
pression. I heard, but I did not hear. I did 
not know the thrush's song. Thrushes do not 
sing amidst the roar of trains and trolleys, 
steam drills and traffic, where I must spend 
most of my days. But I know it now. Oh, 
the sounds I learned that week! Even the 
memory of them thrills me. 

I know the world is full of sounds I do not 
hear. I have not listened long enough to 
distinguish and understand many a sound in 
the world of men. But I can never hope to 
develop in myself nor discover and train in 
another the qualities of leadership until my 
ears, deaf to this thing and that and the 
other, shall have been truly and altogether 
unstopped. 

Life in all its varied phases is like every 
other teacher. It has much more to say than 
any pupil, even the most earnest, hears; and 
to the careless and heedless ones, it is but a 
confusion of sounds, the loudest and most 
persistent holding attention for the moment. 
One fails to hear because he does not listen. 
He has neither the passion to know nor the 
deep desire to help. No chatterbox ever be- 
came a great leader. It is a most interesting 
experience to sit — a listener — where a group 

32 



THE EAES THAT HEAR 

of average men or women are talking together. 
One is reasonably sure of (the topics of con- 
versation before lie joins the group. With 
men it will be business and politics and 
money. With women it will be business — 
the business of the home, school, office, fac- 
tory as may be — clothes and the world of 
pleasure. As a recent listener in a group of 
men, I heard two very earnest talkers. Mr. 
D. spoke rapidly, convincingly and with as- 
surance on the subject of presidential can- 
didates. Mr. K. watched him and joined in, 
desperately eager to be heard, saying over 
and over again, "I want to tell you that — " 
but he never got the opportunity to tell it, 
for Mr. D. held his own to the end. After- 
ward I tested Mr. K. on what his friend had 
said about the candidate he was defending so 
vociferously. He said he did not remember. 
Not remember? He had not heard! He had 
been absorbed in watching for the opportunity 
to complete his sentence, "I want to tell you 
that — " Many a time I have been an inter- 
ested listener when two women literally talked 
together. Neither heard even; a word that the 
other said, but both enjoyed the half hour 
together. But such men and women neither 
lead nor discover leaders. Lincoln was a 
good talker but a great listener. He heard 

33 



THE HIGHWAY TO LEADERSHIP 

so truly that lie understood both friend and 
enemy, recognized strength and weakness in 
each, and was rarely unjust to either. The 
man whose ears are deaf hears only the echo 
of his own thoughts and his world is very 
small. 

Every one who hopes to develop within 
himself the qualities of leadership or to be 
enabled to discover and train others must 
stimulate his dull ears until the range and 
keenness of their response is constantly in- 
creased. Again and again he must learn a 
new language in order that he may truly hear. 
What a sensation of defeat, of handicap, a 
consciousness of disadvantage one experiences 
when surrounded by people talking eagerly 
together in an unknown tongue. And then, 
when one gets the language, what freedom 
and release! There is many a language 
spoken in America today which we cannot 
understand. I do not mean Italian, Polish, 
Lithuanian and the countless other tongues. 
I mean the language of childhood, of boy- 
hood and girlhood, the language of the poor, 
of the rich, of people of the church and the 
unchurched, of labor and of capital. These 
Languages we must learn. We must learn to 
hear each other or we are lost. One can hoar 
so much more easily words uttered in the 

M 



THE EAES THAT HEAR 

voice of one whom lie knows. One who hopes 
to lead or to discover leaders must learn to 
know his fellow human beings, that he may 
more easily hear them when they speak. All 
are talking today but few are hearing what 
is said. If, twenty years ago, there had been 
scores of patient listeners and a multitude 
with keen ears to detect the sounds of warn- 
ing, we should not today be struggling against 
almost overwhelming odds in the effort to 
make of this old world a place where jnan may 
be really free and truly happy. ! 

If we are to discover leaders in America 
and train them to lead and not drive, we must 
begin to listen intently and unceasingly. If 
necessary, we must be willing to undergo 
more than one ethical, moral, and spiritual 
surgical operation to remove the causes of 
our present deafness. Many a one could be 
a great leader if pride did not dull his ears. 
He hesitates to confess that he does not un- 
derstand and will not seek counsel of those 
who have a finer sense of hearing in some 
lines than he. Only a humble spirit can 
hear what the braggadocio voice of youth in 
the individual and the nation is really saying 
these days. Many a one might be a true 
leader if conceit had not dulled his ears. No 
one listens intently if he is certain that he 

35 



THE HIGHWAY TO LEADERSHIP 

already knows. I remember a teacher whom 
I once observed for several days to try to 
discover why she failed with the i^roup of 
eighth-grade boys she was trying to lead. 
One boy was a constant source of trouble. 
Some of us felt sure that there must be some 
reason for misbehavior. "He can give plenty 
of reasons," the teacher said, "he is full of 
them. But he is lazy, disobedient, disagree- 
able, a real nuisance in the class." Inquiry 
into the boy's home conditions revealed an 
unusual combination of circumstances that 
went far to explain his behavior. The mother 
had been seriously ill with pneumonia, and 
partial recovery left her with a heart so weak 
that she could do only the lightest work about 
the house. The father, while at work as a truck 
driver, painfully injured his foot and was just 
getting about on crutches after many weeks 
of suffering. There w r as a grandfather, 
eighty-six years old, simple and troublesome 
as a child — and this boy of thirteen. When 
he told his teacher that he could not do his 
home work, he spoke the truth. Before school 
he prepared the breakfast and purchased the 
food for the day; he sold papers after school; 
in the evening he scrubbed and cooked under 
his mother's direction. On Saturdays he 
worked on a delivery wagon until time for his 

36 



THE EARS THAT HEAR 

papers. Funds were very low, and on Sun- 
day he added a little by helping deliver ice- 
cream after his paper route was finished. He 
did not have proper nourishment, was thin 
and pale, and his eyes had the weariness of 
a burdened man. Each day he went to school 
tired and suffering from the nagging of his 
nervous mother and irritable father. When 
he said that he could not do his problems or 
draw his map correctly, when he said he was 
too tired to do extra work which she felt he 
must do because he was kept behind the class 
by frequent absences, when he said he did not 
care whether he passed or not and wished he 
could leave school, he told the truth. But she 
did not hear him. She was so sure that she 
knew that she learned nothing from what he 
said. She only closed her lips tight and said 
coldly, "The boy is lazy and rude and hasn't 
an atom of interest or ambition," and treated 
him accordingly. The very wonderful woman 
who had made the inquiries about the home 
had learned to listen, she has the keenest 
ears I have ever known; but even she was a 
little surprised the day after she had made 
her discoveries to have the apparently lazy, 
indifferent, disagreeable pupil throw himself 
into her arms and sob out like a very little 
boy that he wanted to be good but some way 

37 



THE HIGHWAY TO LEADERSHIP 

he couldn't please anybody. His father 
scolded him and his mother did and Miss B. 

always did and he felt sick and didn't care 
what they said to him. He was only thirteen 
— a boy with no boyhood — and the world was 
deaf. He could not make it hear, so he fought 
it as many a misunderstood soul of greater 
years than he has done and is doing. 

Many a man or woman might be a real 
leader and alive to signs of leadership in 
others if self-interest could be removed. 
There is a kind of self-interest which is 
normal, sane and right. But the self-interest 
which causes complete loss of the hearing 
ear is very prevalent in individuals and in 
the nation today. It means death to leader- 
ship. Those afflicted with it hear nothing 
which might turn them aside from the quest 
for more and more and more. Until some 
operation removes this type of self-interest 
we shall be seeking in vain for real leader- 
ship. Xo one can learn to hear in a moment. 
It takes years of listening. "When the chil- 
dren of the first grade begin their lessons in 
appreciation of music they hear very little. 
They can listen but a very short time. Only 
the simplest things are given them. After 
a while they learn to hear the rippling of the 
brook in the music that is played. Faces 

38 



THE EARS THAT HEAR 

shine and hands wave as they recognize it. 
Those first days they could not hear it at all. 
After eight years of training the result is 
most gratifying. There they sit in the music 
room, fifty of them. A selection they have 
never heard is played to them. They listen 
quietly, intently, then they analyze what they 
have heard. "It was martial music in four- 
four time." They heard "marching feet, 
drums, a bugle call, the order for the fight, 
the roar of cannon, sounds of victory, then 
sadness as if many were killed." I shall 
never forget the astonishment upon the face 
of a visitor in the class that day. "I know 
it was some sort of march — that is all I 
heard!" she exclaimed. Then their teacher 
played for them, several times, a theme upon 
which a new composition had been built. She 
asked them to hum it. They did, as a class 
and as individuals. Then she played the 
selection. Whenever the theme appeared 
anywhere on the keyboard hands were in- 
stantly raised. The visitor could not follow 
the theme. Eight years had helped those 
children's ears to hear. Hers, devoid of 
training, were deaf. 

The fact that one may learn to hear is 
most encouraging to those who would discover 
and train leaders or who long to develop 

39 



THE HIGHWAY TO LEADERSHIP 

qualities of leadership in themselves. It 
means that if one will listen patiently there 
will come the day when he can hear. 

There are some things, of course, to which 
all true leaders must be deaf. The real 
leaders of all time have persistently refused 
to listen to those things that would make them 
forget the purpose or turn aside from the 
goal. They have refused to listen to the 
voice of mocking scorn, they were deaf to 
destructive criticism, they closed their ears 
to "It cannot be done," "It is quite impos- 
sible," and all kindred phrases, they would 
not hear the words of discouragement. Jesus 
would not listen to the voice in the wilderness, 
nor to the tempter in the temple, nor even to 
the children in the streets of Jerusalem. He 
would not be turned aside from his purpose 
nor lose sight of his goal. But how keenly 
he listened to all other sounds in the daily 
life of which he was a part! In this as in all 
other phases of experience he shows "the 
way." 

As one looks at the youth of our day in its 
later teens and early twenties, what one sees 
gives hope. Despite its many outstanding 
weaknesses and defects and the handicap of 
the extravagant wasteful days it has wit- 
nessed, youth is listening. It is striving more 

40 



THE EAES THAT HEAR 

earnestly than youth has ever striven, I be- 
lieve, to know the language of its fellows and 
to understand what they are saying. Youth 
is trying truly to hear. There is much prom- 
ising material out of which real leaders, and 
many of them, may be made. If we can help 
these youth to overcome ignorance, to per- 
sistently banish pride, conceit and self-inter- 
est, to make every effort to get acquainted 
with their fellows of every name and creed 
and color, to listen that they may learn, then 
we shall develop a group so keen of hearing 
that they will be able to lead, safely and wisely, 
for the good of the individual and the nation, 
those whose duller ears would send men into 
certain disaster and overwhelm them with 
defeat. 

The third great stretch over the highway 
to leadership may be made with confidence 
by those who, having ears, — hear. 



Test the so-called leaders of the past and present by the test of 
'The Ears That Hear." 
Test those who you think have capacity for leadership. 
Test yourself. 



41 



IV. The Heart That 
Feels 



Chapter Four 
THE HEAET THAT FEELS 

One clear, cold winter day when, from the 
window of the Pullman, the world seemed 
white indeed, as we slackened speed for a 
hard grade ahead, my eyes were fastened for 
a second on a huge billboard ,on a knoll in the 
meadow. The board was a dull green, but 
the words were in bright red — "Man looketh 
on the outward appearance, but God looketh 
on the Heart/ ' 

The words, so familiar that one scarcely 
gives attention to them when heard from a 
pulpit or read from the Bible, seemed 
strangely new, thrilling, challenging out there 
in the lonely meadow, so red against the green 
background and the white silent world. "God 
looketh on the Heart," they said. All this 
deadening race of men for things, all this 
wild display of the spoils of victories dearly 
won, the sound of hammers that build the 
countless places men love to look at and call 
mine, the smiles of satisfaction of those who 
have bought and sold and added new gold to 
gold in the markets of the world, over all 
these God looketh down on the Heart — the 

45 



THE HIGHWAY TO LEADERSHIP 

heart of the nation and of the individual — 
looks to the center of things and makes his 
estimate of man according to what he sees. 

When one day man shall see as God sees, 
what a readjustment in values there will be! 
Man seldom looks on the heart. He looks on 
that outward appearance, makes his judg- 
ments, classifies his fellows and is, in the main, 
content with his own decisions regarding what 
he sees. But from such men leaders do not 
come, nor are those who are content with the 
outward alone discerning enough to discover 
qualities of leadership in others. The world 
needs, in its hour of deep perplexity, the 
heart that, warm with sympathy and respon- 
sive to all that moves quietly along at the 
center of things, generates the power that 
will one day become action. 

Many a would-be leader has utterly failed 
because totally unaware of this great com- 
posite heart at the center of life. The history 
of the days of the four or more years of the 
war gives to us a long list of names of those 
who trusted in the trained might of men and 
forgot to reckon with the heart of mankind 
which, limited and undeveloped as it is, is the 
great factor in battles of whatever sort. 

If the world is to be saved from itself and 
spared greater chaos and suffering, it should 

46 



THE HEART THAT FEELS 

be very busy these days cultivating the heart 
that feels and therefore holds the touchstone 
of understanding. Because men do not under- 
stand each other, their desires are warped. 
And until one's desires are fired with a pas- 
sion for human welfare even at a cost, the 
world must resort to laws; and laws are not 
difficult to ignore, to evade, or to disobey. 
When the laws designed for the protection 
and welfare of the whole run athwart the 
desires of a self-centered heart, there is 
trouble. When any number of individuals 
with dull, self -centered hearts meet the law 
and defy it, there is the spirit of anarchy. 
Law is never free to do its work when stand- 
ing face to face with groups of people who 
want their own personal desires to be the 
test of the action of community or nation. 
They do no:t want to meet the desire of the 
greater number for the good of the whole. 
One sees the principle illustrated every hour 
of the day. He sees it as he observes the 
traffic laws. It is most interesting to stand 
for twenty minutes in a sheltered spot and 
watch the people of the city of New York 
observe the traffic law on Fifth Avenue. The 
law is very simple and very plain. A yellow 
light and a green light from tall towers direct 
the traffic east and west and north and south. 

47 



THE HIGHWAY TO LEADERSHIP 

A red Hash gives warning of the change from 
one to the other. The people know the regu- 
lations. They know they were made in an 
effort to reduce the figures of accident and 
loss of life that in America rival the war 
losses each year. But these people do not 
desire safety. Each thinks he could get safely 
to the other side, and of his fellow he does 
not think at all. So one standing by sees the 
officer struggle with the waiting crowd that 
need wait but three minutes at the most. 
That crowd of human beings presses forward 
to the curb, beyond the curb, on to the Avenue, 
a little farther into the Avenue — the vehicles 
now must change their course to avoid hit- 
ing them. The officer stretches out his hand 
and pushes the whole crowd back to the 
curb, where they do not remain. The scene 
is enacted over and over again every day. 
Xow and then I have seen a rash individual 
slip around behind the officer and, dodging 
every sort of speeding vehicle, gain the other 
side in safety. One day when traffic was 
moving rapidly east and west, I saw a young 
man who had once been pushed back to the 
curb, step out from the crowd, make a dash 
for the other side, only to be knocked down 
by a heavy truck. In a few moments he was 
dead. The law meant for the preservation 

48 



THE HEAET THAT FEELS 

of life in himself and his fellows, when it 
came into contact with his desire of the mo- 
ment, meant to him only a thing to be evaded. 

Standing one day with a girl who urged us 
to cross and not wait " three whole minutes, " 
I said, "If I have the right to cross every 
individual in this crowd has the right, and 
then where would the traffic laws be!" Her 
answer was quite significant. "I should think 
you would be perfectly wretched thinking 
always about other people's rights,' ' she said. 
Her training had been such that there was 
no response in her heart to the will of others 
or the desire of others. All her desires and, 
therefore, all her actions were keyed to the 
note of self, and she is fairly representative 
of great masses of people all over the world 
at this moment. 

When the amendment to the Constitution of 
the United States was passed and prohibition 
was made a law of our land, many who did 
not personally believe in it as a law accepted 
it as the will of the majority designed for 
the good of the whole. But large numbers 
of American citizens resented the law as an 
affront to their own desires; therefore, they 
evaded it. Some distillers and brewers of 
liquors accepted the law in the letter and 
spirit and, as true citizens, rebuilt their fac- 

49 



THE HIGHWAY TO LEADERSHIP 

tories and went to work on other products in 
a way of which any republic may well be 
proud. Others could not accept even a part 
of the Constitution as law when it crossed 
their own personal desires. They are deter- 
mined to continue the business, to make the 
liquor in Cuba and connect the States with 
it by Booze Ships, to find a market for it 
in secret trade which is, or ought to be, below 
the standard of honor of any American busi- 
ness man. Some have planned to take entire 
manufacturing plants to China and create a 
market for liquors among the mass of un- 
trained, uneducated masses just waking up — 
if it shall mean a deadly curse to that great 
nation, what of that? The good of the whole 
— it has no place in their desires, their hearts 
do not respond in the slightest degree to the 
appeal of the weakness of their fellows; they 
are cold, dead, they cannot feel until the 
chord of self is touched; then they answer. 

When one gets deep down into the funda- 
mental causes of the world's distress and 
restlessness, he will find at the very center 
the inability to "feel with" another, the utter 
lack of warm, human understanding, the total 
absence of the power to exchange places in 
sympathetic imagination. 

I think so often of two young men under 

50 



THE HEART THAT FE£LS 

twenty-five who went into service across as 
privates in the ranks. In birth, education and 
social station, they could not have been] farther 
apart. One had been taught to hate the class 
his fellow soldier represented; the other's 
training had led him to ignore or scorn men 
such as these who were to go with him into 
battle. But, in the mud-filled, bloodstained 
trenches, each found the other's heart. One 
day when the young man to whom life had 
given few opportunities lay dying from weak- 
ness and shock after an operation, his mate 
of the trenches to whom life had been very 
generous, just recovered from a splintered 
shoulder, lay down on the table to give his 
own blood to save his friend. The operation 
was a success, and in time both went back 
to their unit and on into the area of occupa- 
tion. They are at home now. The one to 
whom life had given so little opportunity has 
lost the bitterness of class hatred. It is 
changed into determination to make plans 
for bringing about mutual understanding 
among men, and the fine spirit in his work 
promises much. The other has found his 
brother's heart that was hidden from him 
under the maze of things. He has become 
conscious of responsibility; and plans for 
building substantial bridges of justice over 

51 



THE HIGHWAY TO LEADERSHIP 

the chasm that yawns between those who have 
and those who have not; are now his passion. 
These are only two, but they represent many 
others who, in the days when realities were 
very near and very clear, felt the thrill of 
hearts stimulated to the point where they 
could mutually understand. 

If we are to discover, train, and develop 
those who have hearts capable of great human 
response, we shall have to get quickly to our 
task of revising many of our schemes of edu- 
cation, both secular and religious. We must 
teach our children human things. We must 
forget old prejudices, old bigotries, old points 
of emphasis that divide. We must interest 
our children and youth in all the world, and, 
while we give them the deepest appreciation 
of the land we love best and the people dear- 
est to us, w r e dare tiot fail to give them an 
appreciation of the service man gives to man 
all over the earth, of the dependence and inter- 
dependence of all men, of man's equality r as 
man, of the high duty of intelligence to ig- 
norance, of the call to give and take in mutual 
self-respect. 

Such teaching will take courage and wis- 
dom, but it must come. The day was when 
we taught our children and youth the mean- 
ing of charity as we understood it and, after 

52 



THE HEAET THAT FEELS 

many struggles, they learned the lesson fairly 
well. Now we must teach our children the 
meaning of justice, the newer, fuller meaning 
that has been burned into it the past ten 
years, for the day of charity as such is pass- 
ing. We must teach it to all our children 
and youth — group or class teaching will not 
do— and we must be prepared to give some 
illustration of our teaching by our deeds. 

The heart that feels, not with a weak, sen- 
timental response which will pass painlessly 
from one thing to the next without register- 
ing in action, but the heart which in very 
truth feels with another the sufferings, handi- 
caps, struggles, hopes and dreams of that 
other is the need of the hour. Such a heart 
could not possibly enter upon definite, well- 
laid plans for systematic profiteering in any 
line, least of all in the feeding, clothing and 
sheltering of his brothers. Such a heart 
could not organize schemes by which men 
should demand much and give little in return. 
The heart that feels cannot permit itself to 
act against the welfare of its fellows. 

More than that, the heart that feels will act 
positively. It will not shirk its duty to weaker 
peoples, to the hungry or the needy. Such a 
heart has at the base of its action the sharing 
spirit. 

63 



THE HIGHWAY TO LEADERSHIP 

Men and women who in all ages have led 
mankind on to higher planes of life and 
thought, to greater conceptions of duty and 
privilege, to better conditions of housing or 

toil, to release from ignorance and supersti- 
tion have been those with hearts that feel. 
Phillips Brooks had the heart that feels; and 
it made the religion he preached a living, 
vital, transforming power, a reality in the 
lives of men. Edith Cavell had the heart 
that feels; it saved weary, worn, discouraged 
souls, strengthened their bodies, sent them 
back to the fight and in its final sacrifice gave 
to the world a picture of heroism that will 
never be forgotten. Jacob Eiis had it, and 
by its suffering paved the way to a play- 
ground for the feet of childhood, cleaned up 
evil haunts of men, and let saving sunshine 
into many a dark breeding-place of crime. 
The long list of those the *world axound w x hose 
hearts have saved their fellows and led them 
on make us hopeful of man, despite the great 
mountain of his failures. 

Our day is ready for the heart that feels. 
It has tried the heart hardened by the grip 
of gold-stained fingers and shrunken by the 
pressure of self-centered desire; and., while 
that heart has brought some material things 
to a world that needed them, it has failed 

54 



THE HEART THAT FEELS 

utterly to make a world happy or free in the 
use of them. It has tried the heart that kept 
itself aloof, that stifled its responses and an- 
swered its brothers with cold, scientific words, 
that gave no joy and offered but little escape 
from poverty! and sin to those who were wait- 
ing to be led, eager to be shown the way. The 
day is here when all the world asks to be ap- 
preciated, to bq granted rights and privileges, 
but most of all to be understood. The heart 
that feels can answer the requests. It can 
create the spirit of friendship between nations 
and men, it can restore confidence. 

But it is in Jesus Christ that we find, for 
all time and for all men, the supreme example 
of the heart that feels. He felt so deeply that 
he could and did strike the rock bottom of 
human experience. He understood kings, 
rulers, and slaves. He understood the sinning 
woman and the scorning Pharisee. Both 
knew it. She accepted help, and he ran away 
from the great demands. It was the heart 
that felt that dictated the principles of life 
which, no matter what men may think about 
them today, must become the foundation prin- 
ciples of individual, national and international 
action and relationship before humanity can 
in any real sense be saved from itself for a 
life of prosperity, freedom and happiness. 

55 



THE HIGHWAY TO LEADERSHIP 

Without the heart that responds to these prin- 
ciples, there can be no real leadership. If its 
warm, human qualities do not exist, material 
for development into leaders who can lead 
is lacking. 

The fourth stretch over the long highway 
to true leadership may be taken with con- 
fidence by the heart that feels. 



Test the so-called leaders of the past and present by the test of 
"The Heart That Feels." 

Test those who you think have capacity for leadership. 
Test yourself. 



56 



V. The Mind That 
Interprets 



Chapter Five 

THE MIND THAT INTERPRETS 

Only for the purpose of special emphasis 
can one deal in separate chapters with eyes 
that see, ears that hear, and a heart that feels, 
for these are but servants and messengers 
of that most complex of all machines, that 
which makes man man — the mind. In these 
brief and simple studies of leadership there 
is no room for an analysis of the human mind. 
What is the mind? Does one see with the 
eyes or with the mind, does he hear with the 
mind or with the ears? "What is the heart? 
What takes place when it responds? All these 
are fascinating questions for the philosopher, 
great challenges to one with a passion for 
research ; but they are apart from the purpose 
of these studies. We shall have to accept the 
mind as the machine which directs the indi- 
vidual. In no individual is that machine per- 
fectly developed. Here is a man who does 
not see, another who does not hear, a third 
whose delicate apparatus meant for discern- 
ing and sharing the great human heart of 
the universe is partially or wholly paralyzed. 
He who hopes to develop in himself the power 

59 



THE HIGHWAY TO LEADERSHIP 

of leadership or to discover and train it in 
others must never lose Bight of the fact that 
we shall not have a fully civilized society until 
the mass of individuals have the developed 
mind, symmetrical, whole, and therefore free. 

AVe boasted of our civilization before 1914; 
only the most foolish boast of it now. We 
were not civilized, we shall not be until the 
mass of us have developed the mind that 
can interpret. Only in rare instances do we 
find that mind today, therefore the paucity of 
leadership. 

This morning three interesting people en- 
tered the dining-car. The man was about 
thirty, well put together and having one hun- 
dred per cent of self-assurance. The girl, a 
few years his junior, was most attractive and 
fashionably gowned. Their child, a little five- 
year-old, held very close in her arms a large 
baby doll. She talked to it softly as she 
entered the diner. As she sat down the hand 
of the doll hit a glass and it rolled to the 
floor and broke. The father was annoyed. 

"Why do you let her drag that doll every- 
where?" he said to his wife. Then reaching 
across the table he took it from her and gave 
it to the waiter. 

"Here," he said, "put this thing back 
there, we'll get it as we go out." 

60 



THE MIND THAT INTERPRETS 

For a moment the child's face showed as- 
tonishment, then anger. "Give her back to 
me, Daddy!" she said indignantly. 

"We'll get it after breakfast," he said. 

"She is hungry," said the child in a 
trembling voice. "I promised her breakfast. 
She is very hnngry." 

"What nonsense," said the man, turning 
to his wife. "Betty, sometimes that child 
talks like an idiot," and he proceeded to 
order breakfast. 

The child ate little. She was very quiet, 
and twice I saw her put up her little hand 
and wipe away great tears. Her reunion with 
the doll made tears come to my own eyes. 
The father was unmoved. When they reached 
their section the mother kissed and petted 
her little girl, but he read the paper. There 
was no apology for hurt feelings. He did 
not know what he had done. He had brought 
that child into being, but to him her behavior 
was idiotic. Of the world in which she is 
living he knows nothing. He has a keen 
mind, I am sure, but it cannot interpret. He 
will probably be a success of a sort; he may 
make money, but he will walk over the bodies 
and souls of men and he will create bitterness, 
adding it to the mass of ill-feeling that will 
some day demand a terrible reckoning. He 

61 



THE HIGHWAY TO LEADERSHIP 

has eyes — they do not help; ears but they are 
deaf; a heart, but the hardening process has 
already begun so that his warped mind cannot 
interpret. 

Some time since I saw a day laborer — a 
painter — purchasing a victrola, an expensive, 
fine-type machine. He was also buying 
records. With him was his wife, a woman 
whose face bore lines of care and whose 
hands showed they had known hard work. 
A bright, interesting girl of fifteen and one 
about twelve were with them. They chose 
several familiar, rag-time and jazz selections, 
a Kreisler solo, a record of Pryor's band and 
the Sextet. The man paid cash proudly. 
They took the records with them. The fifteen- 
year-old urged immediate delivery of the 
victrola. It seemed as if she could not leave 
it. She returned a second time to ask the 
clerk to be sure to send the particular one 
they had chosen. 

"Well," said a very prosperous-looking 
customer who was waiting, as the door closed 
upon them, "they are the people who are 
buying victrolas today. I've known them a 
long time. She used to help my wife two days 
a week, sweeping, scrubbing and so forth. 
He drank some. They had five children. 
He's braced up lately and they have moved 

62 



THE MIND THAT INTERPRETS 

to the? same street where I live. He is getting 
ten dollars a day! Times have changed. A 
vietrola! It makes me sick the way they 
throw money around. He'd better put some 
of it in the bank!" The words were spoken 
with bitterness. 

The proprietor laughed. "I can't say that 
I seriously object to the purchase of victrolas, 
especially cash purchases," he said; "but it 
is strange the way some of those fellows get 
rid of their money. One of them I know has 
spent nobody knows what on window-boxes 
and porch furniture. Hasn't got much inside 
the home, they tell me. His wife spends most 
of the afternoon fussing over the plants. 
Window-boxes are expensive things these days, 
and you know what furniture is ; but what do 
they care? Husband's getting ten dollars a 
day and their boy gets five. It's a funny 
world!" 

One could not help pitying these two men 
standing there with their hands in their 
pockets and half sneers upon their faces. 
How dull they were. Their eyes did not catch 
even a glimpse of the unbounded joy of that 
family with the new vietrola; they saw no 
hope for the race in that quick answer to the 
hunger for things just out of reach, the hun- 
ger that drives on and pulls up. That father 

63 



THE HIGHWAY TO LEADERSHIP 

did nol want a victrola half as much as he 
wanted to be able to purchase it. It was the 

mark ot his conquest. The neighbors would 
say, "The A family have a victrola!" 

and the very sound of it in the ears of Mrs. 

A would make up in some little measure 

for the days when the children went ill-clad 
and shivering to school, and neighbors said, 

"Mr, A is drinking again, the weather's 

bad and he can't get steady work." They 
could not see that the victrola lifted a whole 
family another round on the ladder and that 
every lift helps the world. The girl of fifteen 
lias eight college catalogues in her room and 
she knows all their contents. Four years ago 
she had expected to leave school and go to 
work as soon as the law w T ould permit. 

Both men were blind to the comfort and 
joy of that veranda with window-boxes. The 
nervous woman who presided over them had 
been a country girl. The death of two chil- 
dren, the care of three others, two of whom 
were now at work, had wrecked her physically. 
Illness had given continual battle to all her 
husband's efforts to support his family. He 
could not keep ahead. Now, ten dollars a day, 
and his son, who was so far nnder weight that 
lie was kept out of the war, earning five! 
Living expenses are higher but still they are 

64 



THE MIND THAT INTERPRETS 

keeping ahead. Already the porch hammock, 
the two chairs and the window-boxes have 
greatly improved the health of that mother. 
But, having eyes that see not, ears that hear 
not, a heart that has no answer, how can the 
two men now talking in low tones together, 
ever interpret? They cannot. They and the 
men whose harsh critics they are reach all 
their conclusions by the route of two abso- 
lutely opposite ideas. 

All the wars of all the world have been 
struggles of opposing ideas. It is ideas that 
do battle upon fields of carnage, not men, and 
warfare will never cease until enough great 
souls are found who can interpret opposing 
ideas in terms that will lead to intelligent 
action for the good of the whole. 

Only five minutes ago a man in the opposite 
section said excitedly, "Yes, the niggers were 
good slaves; they make good servants. You 
can't give 'em power; you simply can't do it. 
They can't stand it. They don't need educa- 
tion. You can't educate 'em. You spoil a 
good servant and you don't get anything." 
He said it in a tone that was final and in the 
face of cold, hard fact that could not be dis- 
puted that had just been read to him by the 
man who shared his section. He closed the 
conversation with, "Educate 'em and give 'em 

65 



THE HIGHWAY TO LEADERSHIP 

the vote, and they don't know their place. It 
can't be done." And lie took up his paper 
and the two opposing ideas continued riding 
along across the prairie. But ideas laugh at 
the smugness of men each deaf to the other. 
They know that some day the two ideas will 
have to meet and be settled. When that day 
comes may God grant us minds that interpret. 

Systems of education need today, all over 
the world, minds that interpret. Men are not 
educating their sons and daughters for a new 
day that is coming silently, surely, under all 
the chaos that hides its approach. The edu- 
cation of an old day still holds. America 
needs a new Mary Lyon, a new Horace Mann, 
a new Colonel Parker. It needs to stop long 
enough to listen to the voices that now can 
scarcely be heard above the clink of gold, 
voices that are pleading and warning, that are 
beseeching the nation to discover and develop 
leaders w r ith minds that can interpret the 
hour that is fast approaching. 

Eeligion needs the mind that interprets. 
With what release of spirit the simple-minded 
men who followed Jesus heard his interpre- 
tations of God and the Kingdom — the inter- 
pretation that, gripping them, made them a 
world force for a new day. The Pharisees 
were content. They wanted no interpretation. 

66 



THE MIND THAT INTERPRETS 

They saw no new day approaching. The 
"thou shalt not's" of the law made the ob- 
servance of the sabbath very clear to them. 
There were certain things to be done, certain 
things not to be done ; one obeyed and was 
safe, he disobeyed and was accursed. Then 
Jesus came. He plucked the grain as he 
walked happily through the fields and en- 
joyed it. He took pity upon deformity and 
cured it. The wrath of the Pharisees was 
great. In the simplest terms Jesus put the 
two ideas over against each other, "The sab- 
bath was made for man," he said, "not man 
for the sabbath.' J These were strange words 
and he interpreted them. "What man shall 
there be among you that shall have one sheep 
and if it fall into a pit on the sabbath day, 
will he not lay hold on it and lift it out? How 
much then is a man better than a sheep? 
Wherefore it is lawful to do well on the 
sabbath day." The new idea was very clear 
when interpreted. All who heard understood 
that its simplicity was its majesty. The 
Pharisees had no answer. If they saw, preju- 
dice silenced them with its hard hand. Every 
idea Jesus taught was in opposition to the 
ideas he found hampering and stifling men 
and misrepresenting God. Always he made 
them very simple, plain, put them down into the 

67 



THE HIGHWAY TO LEADERSHIP 

clear concrete, the refuge of minds not highly 

trained. Then he left the ideas. He did not 
fight for them bnt he died for them, and his 
death Bent them out to do unceasing battle 

even unto this day. Every age has given 
them interpretation to meet the challenge of 
the hour and every past has bitterly opposed 
that interpretation. We need a great, fresh, 
new interpretation for our own day. It will 
be opposed, it will be fought by many fore-, 
it will feel the iron grip of the past and the 
threat of the future, but it will triumph. The 
day of that interpretation seems very near. 
If one reads the signs aright it has already 
begun. Therefore the imperative duty is upon 
us to discover and fit for the task enough 
leaders with minds that can interpret. 

Little minds judge quickly, harshly, with 
no thought of love or mercy. In the mind of 
Jesus there was room for great generosity 
and with that a sincerity that made the cul- 
prit know that the judgment was just. Only 
the false, the thing that could not bear the 
test of honesty, met his scathing word of utter 
condemnation. The mind that hopes to inter- 
pret with any fairness today must be domi- 
nated by his greatness of spirit, else there is 
no hope of true interpretation. 

In reaction from the days of great sacrifice 

68 



THE MIND THAT INTERPRETS 

and world vision brought to us by the war, 
America has plunged into the pit of individ- 
ualism. She cannot stay there and survive. 
A nation built upon ideals and conceived for 
the freedom of all cannot hope to carry out 
her destiny if she becomes the slave of self 
and circumstance. In this hour when all her 
ideals are dimmed and her materialism glows 
with superficial heat, we need to search among 
our youth for those whose seeing eyes, hear- 
ing ears, and burning hearts have the power 
to make the mind that interprets. We have 
such youth if only we are in earnest in our 
desire to find them. They cross one's path 
again and again. There are some among the 
men who saw first-hand the souls of other, men 
fighting beside them in deadly combat to save 
an idea, and found in them incalculable ca- 
pacity for brotherhood. There are some 
among the girls who in the midst of sicken- 
ing horrors saw the white light of the funda- 
mental oneness of humanity. There are some 
in college class-rooms whose eyes reach away 
beyond a quiet campus into a world and 
whose ears hear the call of many tongues and 
nations, and what they see and what they 
hear are making the mind that can and will 
interpret. They ask for direction and gui- 
dance. 

69 



THE HIGHWAY TO LEADERSHIP 

And there are others who are seeing 
Straight and hearing the truth amidst the 
thundering noises of commerce and trade. 
Many of them have already developed the 
mind that interprets but have not yet used 
it for the good of their fellows. They are 
seeking a way. 

There is, I believe, no deeper satisfaction 
in human experience than that of the inter- 
preter. One may promise youth that. When 
suspicion has been removed, one speaking in 
the tongue of many may reveal truth, give 
help, awaken enthusiasm, save from suffering, 
poverty or calamity, open doors of oppor- 
tunity and make possible genuine liberty and 
true happiness. What greater task can one 
desire? This is the task of the mind that 
interprets, the mind as large as need, as far- 
reaching as life itself. It may reveal to man 
his brother and to both a common Father 
whose will — the good of all his children — is 
the ultimate end of life. 

For even a small measure of such a mind 
there is a cost. All true leadership exacts 
heavy toll, but the memory of the cost is lost 
in the reward. 

To all who look forward to great days for 
a generation yet unborn, there is a clear call 
to discover and train those who have the 

70 



THE MIND THAT INTERPRETS 

qualities of leadership — the purpose and the 
goal, the seeing eye, |the hearing ear, the heart 
that feels the world, the mind that interprets 
for the good of men whait it has purposed and 
seen, heard and felt. 

One with the burning desire for the mind 
that interprets and the will to pay the price 
of winning it need not hesitate to enter upon 
the fifth stretch along the highway to leader- 
ship. 



Test the so-called leaders of the past by the test of " The Mind 
That Interprets." 

Test those who you think have capacity for leadership. 
Test yourself. 



71 



VI. The Practice That 
Prepares 



Chapter Six 
THE PEACTICE THAT PREPARES 

Many a youth of talent, with qualities that 
promised leadership in various lines of en- 
deavor, has been lost to the world because he 
had never seen for himself and had never 
been shown by others the part that practice 
plays in the preparation for moments that 
demand leaders. 

When one hears the almost perfect inter- 
pretation of some great selection in oratorio 
or opera, when he sits enthralled by the sym- 
pathetic rendition of a great master's dreams 
in pure, sweet, unerring tones of a violin or 
the soft, intoxicating chords of the harp, it is 
hard for him to remember that, behind the 
glorious thing that he hears, are the years — 
the long, long years of exacting, unremitting 
toil, of self-discipline and real sacrifice. "She 
sings so easily, " exclaimed a thoughtless 
woman in real admiration of one of America's 
truly great voices. Sings easily! Yes, at that 
moment it seemed so. But that perfect tech- 
nique, that command of body and mind, was 
not easy. What hours of patient study that 

75 



THE HIGHWAY TO LEADERSHIP 

ten minutes represented, with what long prac- 
tice that perfect poise was Avon! 

Although it has been said over and over 
again that no one ever becomes great in a 

moment, man finds it almost impossible to 
believe. There still lurks in his consciousness 
the feeling that some fairy godmother or some 
hand of fate has reached out and selected 
this one and that for a crown of fame. That 
great statesman who rose in Congress and in a 
tense moment of our nation's history gave the 
marvelous, convincing, compelling speech that 
turned the tide seemed nothing less than a 
miracle to his associates. "May I ask, sir, how 
long it took to prepare that speech ?" asked 
one in deep admiration. "All my life has 
been a preparation for what I said today/' 
was the quiet answer. 

Those who hope to develop qualities of 
leadership within themselves, those who are 
striving to discover and train leadership in 
others must never let the deep conviction of 
the power of practice escape them. 

There is something in our modern American 
life that makes practice irksome and short cuts 
in preparation most desirable to the average 
person. Strange to say there is, with this 
desire to escape practice, a great longing to 
reap the results of it. Today, more than in 

76 



THE PRACTICE THAT PREPARES 

any other moment of our history, we wish 
to arrive without taking the journey. 

If we are to discover and train the leader- 
ship we so much need, we must inject into 
the self-satisfaction and complacence and into 
the mad rush of our day the consciousness 
of the value of preparation for the day that 
is to be. 

I shall long remember some hours years ago 
spent in a glass factory. Of all the interest- 
ing workmen there, the one who fascinated 
me most was a Belgian glass-blower, the only 
man in the country who could do that par- 
ticular piece of work. His skill made one 
gasp, it seemed as if he must miss — no, every 
time the perfect thing lay before us. 

"How long have you been doing this?" we 
asked him. 

" Thirty-seven years a glass-blower," he 
answered, and then pointing to a boy just 
beginning awkwardly to do a simple task, he 
said, "Began like that boy. Same work. Did 
it the same way — afraid." 

"Will you be making this wonderful thing 
some day?" I asked of the boy. 

"No," he said. "It's too hard. Takes too 
long to get to do it like that. I'm, going to get 
another job next week." 

And so he will. In all probability he will 

77 



THE HIGHWAY TO LEADERSHIP 

join the great army of men and women who, 
lacking the desire to practice, spend their time 
looking for new jobs that for the moment 
promise a quicker and easier way to money. 

Any one who touches youth today — parents, 
the teacher in the public school or church 
school, the preacher in the pulpit, the writer 
of books — will render the greatest service to 
the future of America by helping to instil in 
the individual the spirit of practice. The 
average American home finds it easier to let 
childhood go its own way than to insist stead- 
fastly upon tasks done regularly until prac- 
tice shall furnish equipment and preparation 
for a day ahead. 

I remember a weak-willed little mother of 
a twelve-year-old boy who came to see me 
one day about the teacher of manual train- 
ing. "I want Bobby to drop manual train- 
ing," she said. "He can't do it very well 
and the teacher is not fair to him. Most of 
the other boys in the class are making tool 
kits and the teacher keeps him just matching 
corners of a box, and Bobby can't get them 
to fit. He wants to make the tool kit and I 
think his teacher should let him." 

I explained as best I could Bobby's beset- 
ting sin of rushing through any task with 
but one desire — to get it done without thought 

78 



THE PRACTICE THAT PREPARES 

of how it was done. I tried to show her that 
one cannot make a tool kit if he cannot make 
corners fit. I did my best to awaken in her 
the sense of responsibility for Bobby's future 
for which these things were only a prepara- 
tion, and pointed out that with his present 
characteristic of carelessness in every type of 
work he could never be a successful man. But 
I had little influence, for as she left she told 
me that they hoped to move in the spring and 
then Bobby would go to another school. I 
find so many parents who seem to be utterly 
lacking in the sense of responsibility for the 
man-to-be and the woman-to-be, although they 
look with scrupulous care and devotion after 
needs of the immediate present. 

U I suppose I ought to be teaching my girls 
some things about cooking and housekeeping 
and sewing, as my mother taught me," said a 
sweet woman in response to something I had 
said, "but it is so much easier to do it my- 
self, and they do so dislike having regular 
work. Something they want very much to do 
always comes at that time, it seems." Poor 
little cheated^ girls ! How much they will need 
the discipline of tasks to be done, what a 
lack of preparation for the future their 
mother's mistaken kindliness of heart will 
mean. What a blessing in that future into 

79 



THE HIGHWAY TO LEADERSHIP 

which none of them can look would be the 
habit of meeting a task regularly and per- 
forming it with courage, no matter how dis- 
agreeable. Habit is a great friend on a hard 
day, a friend one has a right to make in 
youth. 

It is hard, of course, to watch another 
practice a thing in which we have become pro- 
ficient — by practice. The public school finds 
it as hard as the home. It is so much easier 
by the stroke of my own proficient pencil to 
make Jimmy's awkwardly-drawn leaves look 
foreshortened than it is to teach him to see, 
then to draw what he sees, then to practice 
until the drawing becomes more perfect and 
brings more and more joy as skill is devel- 
oped. It is hard and, because it is, the 
teacher's pencil is tempted. To solve a 
troubled little girl's problem for her, as she 
sits chewing her pencil and very near tears, 
is so much easier than to show her step by 
step how to do the problem herself, giving 
her practice enough on each process to make 
her proficient. But how cheated she is if it 
be done for her and the joy of conquest and 
the satisfaction of accomplishment denied her! 
All adult life and especially that of our day 
is constantly tempted to deny childhood and 
youth its right of practice and we are already 

80 



THE PEACTICE THAT PKEPARES 

witnessing the results of our weakness. It is 
easy to bewail the lack of leaders, it is hard 
to search out good material and develop it by 
practice for future leadership. 

When we have learned how, it is difficult 
to turn over the task to others, giving them 
the benefit of our knowledge and experience, 
then setting them free to learn how them- 
selves. At a great missionary meeting of 
women's organizations I heard again and 
again the lament that young women were not 
interested and were not helping, and I heard 
deep concern expressed as to the future of 
the organizations when the years had passed 
and the women now leading should be gone, 
and yet no young women were placed on 
important committees or commissions, none 
were asked to share in making plans for 
future work, none were urged to express their 
own convictions on the subject of student 
volunteers, preparation for work in the home 
and foreign field, or on any other thing. 
While lamenting the lack of the presence of 
youth, there was very evident unwillingness 
on the part of these mature women to relin- 
quish in the slightest degree their own leader- 
ship or change in the least their plans. 

When youth did not want to enter in they 
condemned youth. They did not change their 

81 



THE HIGHWAY TO LEADERSHIP 

policies. They want youth to be ready to 
assume the task in the day when they shall 
have gone, but they do not want to teach them 

how to do it and, least of all, do they want 
to give them opportunity for the practice that 
will prepare for the task. In these things 
we who ought to be developing leaders are 
blind indeed. 

Older men of today very grudgingly yield 
their places to younger men, and yet they 
speak harsh words at times of the lack of the 
sense of responsibility of the youth of today. 
I heard a recent address by a man sixty-five 
years old who said very emphatically that the 
young men of today were utterly lacking in 
the sense of responsibility and especially so 
in anything that had to do with the church. 
Yet he had been superintendent of the church 
school of that church forty-three years and 
not in the least progressive during the last 
ten. When he took the office he was twenty- 
two, young and inexperienced. He became, 
through practice and experience, a real leader 
over a long period of years, then he ceased 
to lead. But he was quite unwilling to resign. 
He was asked by a committee to do so last 
yoarj with the hope that a bright, earnest 
returned soldier of twenty-four, willing to 
work, would take his place and find new plans 

82 



THE PRACTICE THAT PREPARES 

that might possibly stop the exodus of the 
early teens. He said he wanted to complete 
his forty-fifth year and he added, "What does 
that young fellow know about superintending 
a Sunday school ?" This unwillingness to give 
youth the opportunity for practice is closing 
the door upon leadership that might be finer 
and more powerful than any we have yet 
known. Practice is the one great instrument 
of preparation. 

What courage the first time demands. The 
first trip made alone up into the air with the 
friendly earth sinking farther and farther 
away, for what steadiness of nerve it calls! 
But courage would not suffice — there was 
practice. At first there was no skill, then a 
little more, then the day when the young 
aviator knew exactly what to do with his 
complex machine and could go alone. Then 
came the day when he was an ace and the 
day when high honors were given him. First 
the day when he is without skill, then the skill 
that practice alone will give him. If he were 
refused the opportunity to begin practice and 
given no encouragement to continue it, there 
would be no teachers, guides, or leaders in 
the air. Practice prepares the sailor fgr the 
storm, the soldier for the enemy's onslaught, 
the scientist for his battle with disease, the 

83 



THE 1 1 Kill WAV TO LEADERSHIP 

preacher for his task, the teacher for her 
class, the physician Tor his Btruggle with life 

and death. Efficiency without practice is 

impossible. 
So many leaders of the pasl have found 

the practice that prepared them for great 
moments in places to which the world would 
not naturally look for leadership. A loft in 
a log cabin, a bed of leaves, a burning pine 

knot by the open fire, three books — these seem 
strange preparation for an executive mansion 
and an hour of national crisis; but they did 
prepare. A lonely fisherman's boat on an 
inland sea seemed a strange preparation for 
a sermon to a multitude of men of many 
tongues and nations three thousand of whom 
believed. But it helped prepare. 

The proud, abstract, scholastic training 
school of the law is not the place one would 
choose for the preparation of the man who 
should one day make his way humbly through 
the world, courageously enduring torture, 
hunger and loneliness, preaching a simple 
gospel at which learning scoffed; but the man 
so trained proved a leader whom numberless 
souls have been willing to follow for centuries. 
Indeed, a manger in the Inn, a sojourn in 
Egypt, youth and young manhood in a car- 
penter shop, three years of varied service to 

84 



THE PRACTICE THAT PREPARES 

a thoughtless, needy, wearying public, now 
singing praises, now shouting rebukes, a trial 
with sentence of death on a cross seem so 
strange a preparation for leading man to God 
that the mind is staggered by it. Yet the fact 
remains that Jesus Christ has led men away 
from narrow confines of time and place, al- 
ways away from the old and worn out and 
dead into the new, untried, living days. Where 
men follow him new worlds are born, as 
Matheson has said in the beautiful prose 
poetry that prays: 

"In the culture of the past, Thou, Jesus 
Christ, art the only modern. None felt 
with Thee the sympathy for man as man. 
They felt for man as Greek, as Jew, as 
Roman, but not as man, or not as hope- 
less, friendless, landless. Thou hast gone 
down beneath all qualities, beneath beauty 
and virtue and fame. Thou hast broken 
barriers of caste; Thou hast reached the 
last motive for charity — the right of hun- 
ger to bread. Son of man, Thou hast 
been, always before us. Thou hast outrun 
our Philanthropy; Thou hast anticipated 
our Charity; Thou hast modelled our In- 
firmaries ; Thou hast planned our Orphan- 
ages; Thou hast sketched our Asylums; 

85 



THE HIGHWAY TO LEADERSHIP 

Thou hast devised our Houses of Refuge; 
Thou hast projected our Homes of Re- 
form; Thou has! indicated the claims of 

the returned convict; Thou hast asserted 
the sacredness of childhood; Thou hast 
given a hand to climbing woman; Thou 
hast outstripped both Peter and John 
in the race to the ancient sepulchre of 
humanity. At the end of all our stages 
of progress we meet Thee." 

It was those years of practice in lowly ser- 
vice for simple folk that formed habits of 
sacrifice, of persistent toil, of obedience, of 
prayer, of loyalty to a purpose which pre- 
pared the Man of the carpenter shop for the 
conquest and leadership of the world. 

One who is to search out leaders to be de- 
veloped dare not scorn any humble spot, and 
one who hopes to develop the qualities of 
leadership in himself will not refuse to give 
and to take every opportunity for the prac- 
tice that will prepare. Over this stretch on 
the highway to leadership all must go — or fail. 



Test the so-called leaders of the past and present by the ttst of 
11 The Practice That Prepares." 

Test those xcho you think have capacity for leadership. 

Test yourself. 



86 



VII. The Courage That 
Faces Fact 



Chapter Seven 

THE COUEAGE THAT FACES FACT 

If it took but the courage of the moment, 
leadership might be comparatively easy. One 
may summon courage to face a task or an 
issue which in a brief space of time must 
be settled one way or the other; but with the 
deeper courage essential to true leadership 
time does not enter in — it must be until the 
task is done. If the leader fails to complete 
it, then, with one supreme effort, he pulls 
together all that he is and has, and setting it 
on fire with the last breath of his own spirit 
he throws the torch to those behind. It is 
the courage that must stand the test not only 
of great moments but of plodding days, 
months and years. Such courage faces fact. 
It faces cold, indisputable fact that has had 
the hopes and dreams of men of all the cen- 
turies hurled against it with no apparent 
result. It faces fact which, if attacked, will 
yield only inch by inch, tossing aside as 
human wrecks many a one who had done 
battle nobly. It is the courage that calmly 
faces the fact of human selfishness, the fact 



TUB HIGHWAY TO LEAPEIiSHIP 

of inertiaj the fact of ignorance. It is the 
oourage that comes down to the plain of the 

concrete and sees feeble-minded children, 
starving children, pitiful, ignorant children, 
that looks at disease and, undeceived as to 
the obstacles against which men must be led 
in the fight against it, dares undertake the 
conflict. Never were men of courage more 
aware of fact than today. The world has 
been drawn very close together, and much that 
once was but hearsay stands revealed as fact. 
It is no ordinary type of courage that today 
looks at that fact of America's feeble-minded 
children and attempts to make a dent in the 
hard shell of their handicap or to stop even 
at one point the main cause of their poor, 
twisted brains. It takes courage to face the 
facts of sin revealed by the draft, facts that 
would be still more bitter if we took society 
as a whole. It takes courage to face the fact 
of sin registered in the innocent children of 
the third and fourth generation, to know what 
two generations of right living would do and 
what a different w r orld this would be in the 
fifth generation if society as a whole were 
true to the laws that make for health, and 
yet face the fact that society is a long way 
from being true. To face these facts with 
the burning courage that wages warfare 

90 



THE COURAGE THAT FACES FACT 

against them in the presence of discouraging 
statistics — this man has done and is doing. 

It takes no ordinary courage to face the 
tubercular of the nation — young, promising, 
laid aside in weakness, cut off at the begin- 
ning of the race- — knowing that it is a pre- 
ventable disease, yet not prevented even 
though progress has been made. It thrills 
one's soul to read the record of those who 
with unfailing courage are making the fight 
with preventable disease. Unceasing propa- 
ganda — posters, pictures, lectures, conven- 
tions, public appeals, house-to-house visita- 
tion, patient teaching in public schools; and 
still there are closed windows, overcrowding, 
underfeeding, neglected colds, careless habits. 
Yet step by step the courage that faces fact 
has reduced the death rate from preventable 
disease all over America. 

One damp, rainy night in midwinter, when 
slowly melting snow gave to the air the pene- 
trating chill New Englanders endure, a young 
man boarded a crowded train on which I was 
a passenger. As we left the train at the 
station he coughed very hard and expecto- 
rated freely as he did so. It was during the 
influenza epidemic and at the height of the 
pneumonia wave. As we crossed the street 
he expectorated again, coughing so hard that 

91 



THE HIGHWAY TO LEADERSHIP 

he had to stand still for a moment, and again 
more than once as we Came out of the subway 

to the Common, although signs were every- 
where and a heavy fine threatened. Finally, 
as we turned up the broad path of the Com- 
mon, I caught up with him and remonstrated. 
I said I was sure he could read the signs. 

lie stopped, looked me over calmly, and said 
with a sneer, "Are you an officer? When an 
officer catches me, he can fine me." 

But I had known young men too long to be 
driven aw T ay by his rudeness. "You see, you 
look so ill," I said, "I thought on the train 
that you ought to be in a warm bed with 
plenty of fresh air and good things to eat. 
You have been ill, haven't you?" 

He looked at me curiously, then said, "Yes, 
I've been awfully sick, pneumonia, both lungs. 
Got to go to work tomorrow", so came in to- 
night. Room up on the hill." 

I asked if I might walk along, as I w r as to 
speak that night at Ford Hall. As we walked 
I told him of the people I knew who had given 
up life during those ten days past. Men the 
city could not spare, mothers — one who died 
on Monday leaving six young children to the 
care of their distracted father, who contracted 
the disease on Wednesday and died Friday, 
and that Sunday night the six little things 

92 



THE COURAGE THAT FACES FACT 

crying their hearts out had been sent to vari- 
ous Homes, — two splendid promising high- 
school boys and one girl, three college stu- 
dents — the list was too depressing even to 
repeat to him. 

"So you see," I said, "when I saw you 
being so careless, I had to speak to you. I 
knew that it meant more germs and more 
victims. I never spoke to any one before." 

"Well," he replied, "I didn't think. I sup- 
pose that is the way somebody handed it to 
me." 

After a moment or so we said good-night. 

The incident depressed me for the moment. 
He was the product of good schools; he was 
American born; he had read the notes of 
warning; he had suffered himself — if all this 
could not make him reasonably careful, what 
could ! 

After the address one of the finest public 
health nurses talked with me. I told her the 
incident and added, "What shall we do to 
help them think and compel them to be care- 
ful!" 

"We shall begin again tomorrow and say 
it all over again and again and go straight 
on fighting until some day we win," she said. 

I shall never forget heri eyes — they are such 
keen, brave eyes and have seen so much of 

93 



THE HIGHWAY TO LEADERSHIP 

human frailty, stupidity and failure. She 
knows all the facts and she has the cour; 

It takes tremendous courage to plunge over 
the top in the zero hour, but it takes even 
greater courage to read carefully the report 
of figures indicating the ravages of the plague, 
smallpox and typhus, and then calmly prepare 
a sanitary unit outfit and go to the battle- 
ground to fight days, weeks, years, often to 
die without seeing the battle won. This is 
the history of those who have done battle with 
the mosquito, the louse, the flea, the hook- 
worm and ignorance for years. They have 
the courage that faces fact, the spirit that 
dares combat it whenever it is against the 
good of man. 

"Trying to clean up those lands, or parts 
of our own land for that matter, is a w T aste 
of money and a waste of life," said a man 
in my presence recently. "There are some 
people who never will be decent or clean, 
you might as well let them alone. In time 
they'll die out," and he went his complacent 
way without even a concept of .the courage 
that must meet fact with other fact until man 
is saved. 

It takes courage for men and women at 
work in the field of education to face the facts 
revealed by the draft, to see how far away 

94 



THE COURAGE THAT FACES FACT 

from boasted universal education we really 
are. It takes courage to look at our foreign 
peoples, our colored people, our mountain 
people, our people scattered about in lonely, 
almost forgotten, spots who cannot read or 
write in any tongue. It takes courage to look 
at the facts of the inadequate and utterly 
unfit schoolhouses of great cities and lonely 
countrysides, It takes courage to face with- 
out hopeless fear the fact of the steady stream 
resolutely turning its face away from the 
teaching professions and the great army for- 
saking the teacher's desk in the schools of 
our country. Yet the courage to face the 
facts is here, the even greater courage which 
can face the fact that politics have played 
and are playing with the task of the making 
of Americans. The courage is here! It is 
already revealing a new spirit of leadership. 
It is too early to prophesy what that leader- 
ship may do, but there is reason for hope. 
It looks as if the day had come when the 
teaching forces, fighting alone so long against 
the desperate odds of accumulating ignorance, 
might count on large groups of the public to 
aid in the battle. The public school is the 
most treasured possession of the true Ameri- 
can, and he is beginning to face fact with 
open eyes and a new determination that will 



THE HIGHWAY TO LEADERSHIP 

be able to make progress even though it be 
inch by inch. 

The forces that are interested in religious 
education have great need of the courage that 
will face fact Religion as a whole has been 
tempted to look away from fact. The cour- 
age that turns and faces it squarely is com- 
paratively new to our day. But that courage 
is hero and it gives hope of leadership. The 
Protestant Church has been looking at some 
facts regarding its children. 1 The Inter- 
church surveys tell us that about one-half of 
the 53,000,000 children in the United States 
are members of any school of any creed where 
religion is taught. In 1916 our Protestant 
church schools reported 21,888,521 pupils, but 
in 1920 it had shrunk to 15,617,060. The 
Protestant Church as a whole gives to its 
children 24 hours a year of regular religious 
teaching as against 335 hours given by the 
Jewish people to their children and 200 hours 
given by the Catholic Church to their children. 

The value placed by the Protestant Church 
upon religious education of its youth, if 
judged by the money contributed for the pur- 
pose, would be a shock even to the most in- 
different. One of our great city Protestant 
churches gives $1.48 per member for its music 

! See World Outlook, May, 1020. 

96 



THE COUKAGE THAT FACES FACT 

and 48 cents per member for all the religions 
training of its youth. It is perhaps a little 
more than the average proportion. Local 
surveys have revealed many facts that have 
spurred to new endeavor men and women who 
have the wisdom and courage to face them. 

The fact that more than half of our chil- 
dren are uninstructed and untrained in re- 
ligion by any church is a menace to the im- 
mediate present and even a greater menace 
to the days ahead. The present day has its 
traditions, its inherited standards. The pres- 
ent acts in relation to its past. What of the 
days ahead when traditions are dimmed, in- 
herited standards less demanding and 26,000,- 
000 of our uninstructed children will be a part 
of the past, the background for the children 
of that new day? 

One of the most encouraging signs to those 
who search for qualities of leadership in youth 
is the apparent hunger for facts. The ques- 
tion, "How do you know?" the request, 
"Well, give us the facts," fall very often 
these days from the lips of young men and 
women. These were once the words of mature 
minds. It is most hopeful for future leader- 
ship that early in their experience the youth 
of our day is willing to gauge action by fact. 
At a recent conference of young men some 

97 



THE HIGHWAY TO LEADERSHIP 

one made a statement thai was challenged by 
the group, The speaker took a paper from 
his pocket and submitted proved, demon- 
strated facts and figures with names, dales 

and places. The effect on the previously 
hostile group was electric. Action was im- 
mediate, plans were adopted, money raised 
to pay the salary of a man who would combat 
those facts and release the boyhood of that 
community from the evil that threatened. To 
see that group act was most heartening. It 
was not afraid of fact. Courage rose to 
meet it. 

If we are to have strong leadership in the 
days ahead, we must train our children to be 
lovers of fact and unafraid in its presence. 
We must cultivate in them the spirit that is 
determined to wipe out facts detrimental to 
the welfare of man's body, mind, and soul, 
to encourage in them the willingness to pay 
the price, often bitter, of a determined fight 
against facts hidden and distorted to shelter 
evil or to serve selfish greed. 

The history of Christian missions furnishes 
a wealth of illustrations of men and women 
in whom burned the courage that can face 
fact. From the days of the great missionary 
who faced persecutions, perils by sea and land, 
cold, hunger, and the sword to the present 

98 



THE COUKAGE THAT FACES FACT 

day that courage is undaunted. There has 
been no lapse, I sat a few moments the other 
day with a brilliant girl who goes to a testing- 
spot. She knows all the facts, the heat, the 
insects, the loneliness, the gross ignorance, 
the opposition, the need, and she goes to fight 
for the welfare of man. And I said good-bye 
but yesterday to another. She knows all the 
facts, the terrible poverty, the ravaging dis- 
ease, the desperate hunger, the menace of the 
Turk, the torture of heart; but she goes to 
orphans who have no claim but their need, 
goes to do battle with facts, to change them 
that she may save life. Men and women 
have said to me that these girls are throwing 
their lives away — that is one quality leader- 
ship seems to possess — but lives that are 
thrown away in this manner have § wonderful 
way of producing fruit. 

The history of explorers records names of 
men who have faced fact with courage, fought 
loneliness, temptation, illness, heat and cold 
to change facts and wring success from 
deserts, mountains, forests, great stretches of 
silent snows. Many of the states and all of 
Alaska bear testimony to courage that has 
faced fact and developed the nation. 

I suppose Cardinal Mercier and Marshal 
Foch knew facts enough to plunge lesser souls 

99 



THE HIGHWAY TO LEADERSHIP 

into the inertia of utter despair. Against the 

tacts he knew, the Cardinal stood like a veri- 
table rock; he fought with the courage that 
Paces fact straight withoul knowledge of fear. 

Pacts so carefully established by tyrants are 
powerless in the presence of such courage. 
Marshal Foch faced hourly facts whose full 
significance probably no other soul knew. "In 
those moments," he says, "I faced defeat, 
but I thought Victory. " No facts carefully 
calculated to destroy man's liberty can stand 
in the presence of a courage like that. 

If one is to develop powers of leadership in 
himself or discover and train them in others, 
he must cultivate this courage that faces fact, 
stands by it unflinchingly if it promises the 
welfare of humanity, fights it unceasingly if 
it menaces that welfare. One may travel the 
highway to leadership with hope if he has 
that courage — without it none can lead. 



Test the so-called leaders of the past andl present by the test of 
'The Courage That Faces Fact." 
Test those who you think hav$ capacity for leadenhip. 
Test yourself. 



100 



VIII. The Patience That 
Teaches 



Chapteb Eight 
THE PATIENCE THAT TEACHES 

All true leaders have one high duty — they 
walk away from darkness toward the light. 
It does not matter that they must leave be- 
hind easy, familiar pathways, or that toward 
the light the way is very rough, hard and 
lonely. If the light be only a gleam, the 
leader seeks it. He walks slowly over the 
road. He dare not run as the prophet runs, 
away ahead of his time and his fellows. He 
stays near enough for them to see him and 
to hear his call. Ignorance is the dark, 
knowledge is the light, and patience leads 
from the one to the other. 

At the base of all human ills, all national 
and international misunderstandings, is igno- 
rance. Men do not know each other and so 
they hate each other. One group of men 
knows nothing of the hopes, ambitions, joys, 
sorrows and struggles of other groups, and 
ignorance creates class hatred. One nation 
has little appreciation of the traditions, man- 
ners, customs, ideals and aims of other na- 
tions and, in the lack of knowledge, misun- 
derstanding, then national hatred is born. 

103 



THE HIGHWAY T() LEADERSHIP 

■ white man knows little of the mystic 

temperament, the reverence for the past, the 

sion for recognition, the deliberateness of 

action of the yellow race, and it in turn can- 
not appreciate the great outstanding charac- 
teristics of tho white man. There is mutual 
misunderstanding and race hatred. Only the 
patient teaching which means mutual acquain- 
tance and final friendship can break down this 
barrier of hate. 

The other clay a mother contentedly fed her 
baby a hard, greasy doughnut and, because 
there was too little milk, she added tea and 
the baby drank it greedily. Convulsions fol- 
lowed. The mother said she did not know 
such food would hurt the child. Half a block 
beyond an old man with diseased eyes played 
with, fondled, and kissed his grandchild, a 
w^ee thing of less than a year, and now the 
baby is blind — the mother did not know the 
disease was contagious. A young profligate, 
who drank freely, sowed his wild oats, then 
reformed suddenly w r hen he fell in love with 
a beautiful girl, said good-bye to her in the 
hospital as she died with warm w^ords of love 
for him upon her lips. It seemed more than 
he could endure when a doctor told him the 
cruel truth. He said that he "did not know." 
Months later he faced a more terrible ordeal 

104 



THE3 PATIENCE THAT TEACHES 

as lie looked at the little son that suffering 
girl had left behind. It would never be as 
other children. If it lived it would be to en- 
dure a life of idiocy. The young man said 
he "did not know," went out, rowed up the 
river in his canoe and never came back. Ig- 
norance exacted terrible payment. Only the 
patience that is willing to teach the? ends of 
the earth can lead from the calamities of 
ignorance to saving knowledge. 

All over the world every day, disease in 
countless forms is propagated by ignorance. 
Like a great octopus it has fastened itself 
upon the peoples of the earth and to fight it 
takes the very patience of God. 

Ignorance is responsible for superstition, 
and superstition blocks the path of progress. 
A wonderful girl just returned from the heart 
of Africa told me of her struggles to teach 
the girls she had succeeded in gathering into 
her school to be clean. In certain phases of 
the moon not a drop of water would they 
touch. Instruction had not yet been able to 
overcome taboo. A beautiful Chinese girl 
told me of her childhood's terror at sight of 
the two straight bands of steel that foreign 
devils had dared to lay on the edge of their 
village. Again and again the men of the 
village tore them up, but at last soldiers 

105 



. THE HIGHWAY TO LEADERSHIP 

came and the rails stayed. The foreign devils 
would not believe when they were told that 
evil spirits follow r straight lines and to be 
safe one must have curves. "AH over my 
wonderful country, M said the girl, "supersti- 
tion says no to so many things that would 
help us to be the greatest of nations." In 
America itself in this day of privilege, hotel 
men in great centers omit room thirteen in 
their numbering! And supposedly intelligent 
women are disturbed when they glimpse the 
moon over the wrong shoulder or let a mirror 
fall from the hands! Superstition, born in 
ignorance, takes the patience of centuries to 
overcome. 

Prejudice is born in ignorance, and preju- 
dice warps the souls of men, engenders in 
them the intolerant spirit, and foils attempts 
to cooperate in action for the welfare of the 
world. All these things that lurk in the dark 
the leader sees, but his eye is fixed on the 
gleam of light and that compels his onward 
march. 

All the release from ignorance that the 
world of the moment enjoys has been won by 
costly sacrifice. When Galileo said the world 
was round he went to prison. "When Martin 
Luther said man need not fear his God, but 
might speak to him and ask for help from 

106 



THE PATIENCE THAT TEACHES 

him, might even love him as a friend, he faced 
the great trial. When Savonarola reproved 
evil in high places and demanded purity in 
word and deed, he was burned at the stake. 
When Wycliffe wrote the message of God to 
man in a common tongue, only his ashes were 
left to float out upon the stream to freedom. 
When the Pilgrims cried aloud for liberty of 
soul, they were banished from the homeland 
to seek their goal across a winter sea in a 
land of savages. 

Prejudice has always persecuted and preju- 
dice is brought into being by ignorance. The 
leader must give battle to ignorance and so 
he passionately seeks knowledge. The true 
leader is always intellectually hungry. He is 
humble in mind, there is no boasting in him — 
he is willing to learn. He stands out in bold 
relief against the background of "cock-sure- 
ness," the noisy display of cheap dogmatism. 
While he seeks to understand, he is certain 
that he does not yet know all. 

Men have too much of the knowledge which 
is founded on hearsay and far less than they 
need of the knowledge founded on deep re- 
search and real hunger for fact. On any 
train in America one may hear, given as fact 
and vouched for in loud tones by the speaker 
who "has it straight, " statements about men 

107 



THE HIGHWAY TO LEADERSHIP 

in public office, leaders in community work, 

women prominent socially, which awaken hot 
prejudice, create dangerous misunderstanding 

and are absolutely without foundation. The 
loader whose eye 18 fixed on the light ahead 
must consecrate his powers to unrelenting 
battle with these mischief-makers who have 
no regard for fact and no hunger for truth. 
The leaders called for by our day must have 
understanding souls so big that the ambitions 
and desires of all sorts and conditions of men 
shall be appreciated, met with sympathy, 
strengthened and encouraged if they are 
right, and turned into new channels if they 
are wrong. The education of the past has 
not helped men or nations to understand each 
other truly. We have taught peculiarities of 
peoples rather than their great characteris- 
tics. Each nation has made comparisons 
which w T ould add to its own glory rather than 
do justice to its neighbor. The astonishment 
registered upon the faces of a thousand high- 
school pupils w 7 hen they listened to two patri- 
otic addresses, one by a colored man, the 
other by an Indian, no teacher in that city 
will ever forget. In the perfect English of 
culture, with a delivery unequalled by any 
of the other speakers of that great day, with 
arguments clear and convincing, they made 

108 



THE PATIENCE THAT TEACHES 

their appeal. I remember the surprise of a 
group of keen young business girls as they 
listened to an Italian officer's story of Italy's 
part in the war. To them an Italian was a 
"dago," a fruit-dealer, a bootblack. This 
man of world vision, who spoke to them in 
English, who, though he had never been in 
America before, knew our history and knew 
us so well, laughed with us at our foibles, and 
spoke with genuine appreciation of our vir- 
tues, was a revelation. 

If we are to develop in our youth of today 
the spirit that can lead away from class 
prejudice, national prejudice, and race preju- 
dice into a world where all humanity that has 
gained knowledge will war together against all 
ignorance that holds humanity enthralled, we 
must see to it that our educational system 
provides opportunity for mutual instruction 
in the spirit of just and fair appreciation. An 
educational system that fails to do this will 
also fail to provide leaders for a day when 
the problems of the world as a whole will also 
be the great problems of each nation. 

Perhaps in no realm of human experience 
is superstition more rampant, ignorance 
deeper, and prejudice stronger than in re- 
ligion. To study in any thorough manner 
the superstitions that cluster about the re- 

109 



THE HIGHWAY TO LEADERSHIP 

iigions of the earth and their effect upon 
human history "would take a Lifetime. To be 
able to grasp in any full sense the downward 
pull of the ignorance which various religions 

have tolerated and encouraged and for which 
they are responsible, would mean another 
lifetime. But we know enough to realize that 
the greatest hindrance to progress toward 
higher civilization is in the religions that 
teach superstition and perpetuate ignorance. 
It is for this reason that we look with joy 
at every endeavor to carry the liberty-giving 
concepts of Christianity to all the world. 

When there stand before us examples of 
what a liberty-giving religion that banishes 
all fear and all subservience can do in the 
form of those who at ten were living in dirt 
and poverty and squalor, the victims of super- 
stition, and at thirty are cultured, refined 
Christian men and women, trained, leading 
their people out of the darkness, and taking 
their part in a new world's making, it is no 
wonder that a passion to increase their num- 
bers seizes those who see the light. Every 
honest Christian knows, however, that the 
numbers of those who have been led into the 
light are pitifully few. There will never be 
large numbers until leaders succeed in re- 
moving the prejudice that keeps religion apart 

110 



THE PATIENCE THAT TEACHES 

from life and separates Christian peoples 
into so many divisions that power is lost. 
Against that prejudice the patience that is 
willing to teach is the only weapon. 

Over against patient constructive teaching, 
men have always set violence. In various 
periods of the world's history, violence has 
predominated and much that patience won so 
dearly has been momentarily lost. But after 
the wild onslaught of violence, men have had 
to begin again the patient teaching that saves. 
They have not yet learned to anticipate vio- 
lence by such wise and universal teaching that 
ignorance opens its eyes and sees light. It 
is for that reason that we need so desperately 
at this hour leaders who can teach. 

The growth of liberty and democracy are 
impossible without the patience that teaches. 
Those who are confident that democracy is 
more than a word must be at the task of 
teaching day and night, at this moment in 
the world's development. There is much to 
do. The people must be taught to hate the 
sword, to put it out of their thinking as a 
means of growth. They must be taught to 
settle differences in reasonable discussion 
around a table before, not after, countless 
crosses line a thousand hillsides and starva- 
tion stalks through desolate cities. They must 

ill 



THE HIGHWAY TO LEADERSHIP 

be taught how to frame some sort of strong, 
invincible union against those who, in self- 
Beeking greed, determine to destroy life and 
all that life holds dear. The people of all 
the earth must be taught to hate unoleanness 
and to fight it to the death and to love sun- 
light and seek it at all costs. The peoples 
of so-called civilized lands must be so taught 
that hopeless poverty and city slums are in- 
tolerable to them. They must be so taught 
that the thought of profit at the expense of 
the body, mind, or soul of any human being 
is hateful to them. They must be so taught 
that the discovery of ways and means of 
bettering the environment and raising the 
standard of inheritance for the children of 
the world shall have as great fascination for 
keen minds as the explorations and inventions 
in the material world have held in the past. 
They must be so taught that, freed from 
ignorance, poverty and superstition, they will 
seek God, finding in him that satisfaction 
which, despite all their seeking after things, 
they have failed to find. 

For the assurance of the success of the 
patience that teaches we must turn to child- 
hood and youth. There is much to encourage 
us. I remember, more than ten years ago, 
leaving a certain school district I had visited, 

112 



THE PATIENCE THAT TEACHES 

depressed indeed by what I saw of physical 
unfitness — weak eyes, open mouths, diseased 
teeth. In a recent visit the change was a 
miracle — a miracle wrought by the patience 
that teaches. The children were clean. In 
the second and third grades they proudly 
showed me their teeth and told me about 
their "fillings." There were many pairs of 
glasses that had banished nervousness. 
Mouths were closed and breathing corrected. 
The Health Club report was thrilling. Hope 
for the future and joy over the accomplish- 
ment of the ten years past walked home with 
me that day. 

Years ago in a neighborhood fast earning 
an undesirable reputation, a group of boys 
planned mischief, annoyance to neighbors and 
shopkeepers and finally robbery. There were 
arrests, and criminal records began. Then a 
settlement home was established and every 
hour of the day and late into the night 
patience taught. That neighborhood has had 
no juvenile court cases for six years. A daily 
vacation Bible school has opened in the great, 
cool basement of a church where, under direc- 
tion, through scorching summer days, children 
play, study, sing, make things, and then 
rest. A Young Men's Christian Association 
has opened a swimming-pool and a gym- 

113 



THE HIGHWAY TO LEADERSHIP 

nasium. The patience thai teaches is at work, 
and the result is cleanliness and char;' 
thai will bring blessing and not menace to 
America's future. 

For encouragement in the task, the patience 
thai teaches can turn to Infinite Patience, 
still teaching with confidence after all the 
centuries. 

If I am to develop within myself or dis- 
cover and train in others the qualities of 
leadership for which our day so eagerly waits, 
I must have the patience that teaches. With 
it another long stretch on the highway to 
leadership may be triumphantly passed. 



Test the so-called leaders of the past and present by the test of 
"The Patience That Teaches." 

Test those who you think have capacity for leadership. 
Test yourself. 



Ill 



IX. The Will That 
Persists 



Chapteb Nine 
THE WILL THAT PERSISTS 

U I will," registered in action for the good 
of the individual and of society, is the 
strongest character-making force in human 
experience. It is also the keynote of all 
accomplishment in every line of great en- 
deavor. The path of human progress is lined 
with the wrecked hopes of those who had 
visions but lacked the will to persist until the 
vision was realized in fact. 

The successful pioneer in all periods of 
exploration has had the courage to persist. 
The wilderness has not daunted him; mighty 
rivers have not stopped him; deserts have 
not been able to discourage him; mountains 
have not long blocked his way; savages, wild 
beasts, scorching, blighting heat, bitter, be- 
numbing cold have not been able, save for the 
moment, to triumph over him. 

The pioneer in music, in art, in literature, 
in science has written his record of progress 
by the sheer force of the "I will." It has 
cost him much; it has sent him to bed hungry 
and sleepless; it has shut him away from the 
sympathy of his fellows; it has plunged him 

117 



THE HIGHWAY TO LEADERSHIP 

into weary days of waiting when even hope 
died; but it has persisted and at last won. 

The pioneer in every experiment for human 
betterment has had the will to persist. He 
also has had to walk the way of hardship and 
opposition. Not only has he had to fight the 
human parasites that live on the weaknesses 
of their fellows and resent deeply any inter- 
ference w r ith their prey, but he has had to do 
battle with the prejudice that clings to old 
ways and will have none of the new. I sup- 
pose that seldom in the history of human 
effort for human good has there been met by 
an individual such opposition as that faced 
by Florence Nightingale when she started 
out to the Crimean Peninsula with her vision 
of the hospital on the field of battle — lack of 
sympathy and confidence at home, indifference 
and scoffing in the government, baffling dis- 
ease, unspeakable horrors, dirt and doubt on 
the field itself. But the will to persist despite 
all brought success at the end of the long 
road, a success that paved the way for the 
saving service of the Eed Cross. The 
pioneers in medicine, in surgery, in work for 
public health, all have been kept moving 
toward the goal by the will which would not 
let them go until the thing was done. 

The pioneers in education in all its varied 

118 



THE WILL THAT PERSISTS 

forms have met the same challenging ob- 
stacles, battled with them and overcome them, 
only to find new foes ahead who must be met 
and defeated in turn — it is a constant warfare, 
with new pioneers at every branch of the 
road, and no hope for final victory save 
through the will to persist. 

The pioneers in the field of freedom and 
justice for women— what jeers, censure, ridi- 
cule and mockery they have endured, but the 
will to persist is carrying them through! 
The pioneers in the work of protecting child- 
hood, giving it a chance to play, to grow, to 
enter into manhood and womanhood without 
the stunted body, the handicapped mind, the 
dwarfed soul that are the product of child 
labor, have known and still know the meaning 
of the open fight, the hidden attack, haughty 
indifference, and organized opposition, but the 
will to persist shall one day win. 

The pioneers in the battle to rid the world 
of the curse of alcoholic intoxication now 
meet the full force of the enemy, but the will 
to persist is here also. 

The pioneers in religion, as each new gleam 
of light on far horizons calls for adventures 
in new fields, have met the onslaught of foes 
with the will to persist. "What mockings and 
scourgings, what scathing judgments by their 

119 



THE HIGHWAY TQ LEADERSHIP 

fellows! Again and again the prison coll, tlio 
stake, the slow torture of ostracism have been 
their fate. In foreign lands they have faced 
a score of deaths daily, waited forty years for 
one human soul to say, I believe; but the will 
to persist has opened a broad pathway to 
success. 

Comparatively few among the mass of men 
have had the will to persist to the end. I 
drove recently in a bright new shining Cad- 
illac with a man of sixty-five. He was keen, 
sturdy, perfectly well, and he ran his machine 
with unusual skill over rough, dangerous 
roads. When we reached the crest of the 
hill he showed me the acres of wheat fields 
and on the other side of a rising slope the 
alfalfa. "Forty-three years ago," he said, 
"all but one acre of N that land was unculti- 
vated waste. It was a dry year and the 
meager crop of that acre was all that lay 
between me and defeat. If there was a more 
discouraged young man anywhere in America, 
I don't know where you could have found him. 
An older man who had come out with me was 
called back East by the death of his father. 
When he said good-bye he slapped me on the 
back and said, 'Hold on to the land, Joe. 
Don't give up the thing you came out here 
for. Some day this land will be worth five 

120 



THE WILL THAT PERSISTS 

hundred dollars an acre!' Then we both 
laughed. Well/' he said, pausing a moment, 
"it is worth five hundred dollars an acre." 
Then we drove on. When we had crossed the 
irrigation ditch, he pointed to a shabby 
shanty on the next hill. "The fellow that 
lives there," he said, "came out here two 
years after I did, got discouraged and moved 
on. He's been moving on ever since and now 
has come back where he started. He hasn't 
done anything — he isn't worth a penny. Wish 
he'd had the sense to stick it out some- 
where." 

I could not help looking with admiration at 
the sturdy figure beside me. The will to per- 
sist had won for him the rich fields below 
and the comfortable home on the sheltered 
hillside. It had enabled him to send his son 
to college and his daughter East to study 
music. And he was not confined to his home 
in that spot far from great centers, for his 
mind reached out into all the world and his 
stalwart character and wholesome philosophy, 
as he discussed the problems of the day, 
awakened new hope for tomorrow. The will 
to persist has won achievement for him and 
has given to him real leadership of a section 
of American life whose voice is heard and re- 
spected from coast to coast. All that has 

121 



THE II Kill WAV TO LEADERSHIP 

been given to him lias been denied to the 

poor fellow in the shanty who, without the 
will to persist, became a wanderer and has 
only the memory of his wanderings now that 

the years have gone. 

[f ever the world in general and America 

in particular needed the will to persist, it is 
now. Youth finds itself surrounded by the 
spirit of restlessness. The world does not 
know what it wants and its uncertainty is 
reflected in youth. It is a cause for deep 
concern that so many of our pupils in high 
schools and even in senior classes in colh 
have no idea what they want to do. Even 
ton years ago, a large percentage of our 
senior girls in high schools had a definite goal. 
They were entering college to prepare for 
some special thing. It is not true today. In 
personal interviews, one girl after another 
tells me what father or mother would like to 
have her do, but she seems to lack interest 
in it herself. This is partly because, in so 
many more cases than in the past, she is not 
forced to look forward to earning her own 
livelihood. But, among the girls who must 
look forward to self-support unless they 
should marry, there is the same uncertainty. 
The hoys nearing graduation have expressed 
the hope that some door will open or have 

122 



THE WILL THAT PERSISTS 

felt certain that something good will turn up — 
"There's lots of opportunities these days." 
Statements of this sort are especially preva- 
lent among the so-called good American 
stock. 

This state of mind on the part of large 
numbers of American youth will mean a con- 
tinual loss in the material out of which lead- 
ership is made. To many who have studied 
conditions, the absence of a goal and the lack 
of power to persist seem easily traced, first 
to the upheaval of the years of war and then 
to the chaos of the reconstruction. But, al- 
though war explains conditions, the fact re- 
mains that they must be met. They must be 
met by the introduction of ideals big enough 
and challenging enough to call to youth. In 
the homes of the rich and the poor, the priv- 
ileged and the handicapped, there must be 
some point of interest outside the next day's 
pleasure, the movie star, the money that is 
being made. In multitudes of homes, and 
many of them where it would be least ex- 
pected, conversation never passes outside the 
boundary of gossip, amusements, and posses- 
sions. A friend the other day found the 
fifteen-year-old daughter of a professor in a 
theological school busy with her folders of 
motion picture actresses. Her collection of 

123 



THE HIGHWAY TO LEADERSHIP 

autographed pictures now mounts into the 
hundreds. The girl comes from a long line 
of thinking men and women who have ren- 
dered real service to their fellows, but her 
home and her day have furnished her with 
no greater interest than this collecting mania, 
which shows its effect in her dress and hair, 
her conversation, general air of sophistication 
and the little vanity bag which is her constant 
companion. 

Every thinking man or woman, concerned 
over the lack of leadership in our day and 
the danger that we shall not develop it for 
tomorrow, cannot escape the duty of doing his 
full share to impress upon the American home 
the heavy weight of responsibility resting 
upon it and especially upon the homes that, 
because of background and tradition, ought 
to measure up to their privilege. Leadership 
without homes where ideals are constantly 
present w T ill be increasingly difficult to find. 
The responsibility of providing ideals equal 
to the demand of our day must be shared, of 
course, by community, school, and church, but 
the heaviest responsibility must rest where it 
belongs — upon the home. 

The will to persist cannot be cultivated 
without the presence of a goal, and unless 
boys and girls now in high school and college 

124 



THE WILL THAT PERSISTS 

can be given some goals and some incentives 
to reach them, so far as leadership is con- 
cerned, we are lost. 

Our youth have the right to know the power 
of the will that persists and the value to the 
world of the will that persists for good. 
There may have been in our instruction in the 
past too much of the biography and autobiog- 
raphy of the men who pushed their way past 
one obstacle after another until they wrung 
success from environments that promised none 
and developed character by the fight. Their 
own lives bear testimony to that fact that, if 
they won success measured in money alone, 
they never led — they drove, and they have 
met their fate. Character alo^e makes for 
leadership. Youth ha$ a right to hear it said 
again and again and to have the illustra- 
tions of it pointed out in life. Youth has a 
most encouraging way of responding to ideals 
and challenges even after unworthy things 
have made a place in their minds, but the 
will to persist until the response is regis- 
tered in action is very difficult indeed to 
give to those to whom true discipline is un- 
known. 

After most earnest study of the ways and 
means by which worthy ambitions may be 
awakened in youth, after careful search for 

125 



THE HIGHWAY TO LEADERSHIP 

facts and years of testing of conclusions, I 
am convinced that the response of youth to 
the call of the great principles of religion is 
the strongest factor in the development of the 
will that persists. In answering the call of 
Jesus Christ to follow him, I have seen boys 
with bad habits, weak wills, and no ambition 
transformed into eager students with clean 
minds and clean habits. I have seen their 
weak wills grow strong as they met one ob- 
stacle after another standing in the path of 
the goal. I have looked at them with sur- 
prise and joy when the years had made of 
them business men, engineers, physicians, 
preachers and teachers who are beginning to 
show the power of leadership. 

I have seen weak-willed, selfish girlhood, 
when it has answered the call, changed 
through the years into strong, wise, unselfish, 
responsible womanhood, able to lead. I am 
certain that there is no other incentive to the 
development of the will that persists that can 
equal in power the response to the call and 
the acceptance and loyal allegiance to the 
purpose and program of Jesus Christ. 

Without the power of persistence, the hope 
for strong leadership is but a will-o'-the- 
wisp, a phantom, a mirage in a desert. Over 
the difficult stretch of the will that persists 

126 



THE WILL THAT PERSISTS 

all must pass if they have to reach the goal 
at the end of the highway to leadership. 



Test the so-called leaders of the past and present by the test of 
"The Will That Persists." 

Test those who you think have capacity for leadership. 
Test yourself. 



127 



X. The Confidence That 
Dares Dream 



Chapter Test 

THE CONFIDENCE THAT DARES 
DREAM 

The fate of dreamers is a most fascinating 
study, and to read history in the light of 
dreamers and their dreams fires its dull facts 
with interest. So many men have dreamed 
of empire. In their dreams they saw them- 
selves masters of the whole world, they spoke, 
and life or death, happiness or enslavement 
for millions resulted from the word. Such 
visions were madly intoxicating, and the 
dreamers were willing to put everything they 
had into preparation for the great day when 
the dreams should be realized. Alexander 
dreamed, planned, fought, threw in all that 
he had, and then met the fate. Julius Caesar 
dreamed a dream of magnificent splendor, of 
unlimited power, but the world was never his — 
he met the fate. Charlemagne dreamed, the 
Saracen dreamed, Napoleon dreamed; but 
with each succeeding century the dream of 
one-man power for a world has been harder 
to realize, and that despite the fact that im- 
plements of warfare have grown more terrible 
in effectiveness and trained man-power more 

131 



THE HIGHWAY TO LEADERSHIP 

abundant In our own day, William Hohen- 
zoHern, as we saw in a previous chapter, fol- 
lowed his predecessors. But the dream and 
the preparation for its fulfillment exceeded 
in thoroughness anything the world had ever 
seen. For the realization of the vision, he 
was willing to sacrifice everything, even the 
sacred honor of his people. For it he bar- 
gained their souls and his own. He had the 
confidence of a dreamer but the dream was 
of self and for self. Into it there entered no 
passion for the welfare of men, no thought 
of service rendered to need, and so he met the 
fate. 

All the confidence possible to a human be- 
ing is not enough to insure the certain realiza- 
tion of a dream unless that dream be made 
of the stuff that will ultimately bless man- 
kind. In this one may find the fundamental 
source of hope. Deep down under all the 
maze and chaos of things, there is operating 
a law of right, and the greatest power on 
earth is the confidence inspired in the minds 
and hearts of those w r hose dreams are in 
harmony with that law 7 . It is such confidence 
that makes for leadership. 

Never in the history of the world was the 
confidence that dares dream in harmony with 
the law more needed than at this moment. 

132 



CONFIDENCE THAT DARES DEEAM 

The past is filled with the names, glorious 
names, of those who have so dreamed. They 
have dreamed in the realm of freedom. It 
was that dream which gave the world the 
Magna Charta, the Bible in the common 
tongue, the opportunity to worship God ac- 
cording to conscience, the dawn of true repre- 
sentative government. They have dreamed 
in the realm of material things, and out of 
their dreaming has come communication of 
man with man all over the earth, the gradual 
shrinking of space, the slow drawing together 
of peoples. Telegraph and cable, telephone 
and wireless, steamboat and ocean liner, 
trolley and train and motor, the plane in the 
air, the machines in millions of factories, the 
trade marts of nations, the captive forests, 
the miners' that worm their way to costly trea- 
sure; all these have been the outcome of 
dreams, dearly paid for by the sweat of the 
brow and the toil of the mind of great souls 
who had the , confidence that dares ; and on 
the whole these dreams fulfilled have brought 
blessing to mankind. They have made man 
master of time and space, helped him con- 
quer the handicap of physical universe, they 
promise greater freedom for the day ahead. 
Yet they are not enough. In the years since 
that awful August day when modern civilized 

133 



THE HIGHWAY TO LEADERSHIP 

government was so suddenly shaken, men 
have seen that it was not enough. The day 
for adventure in the realm of the spirit is 
here and the world can go but little farther 
on the upward path until adventurers with 
the confidence that dares dream in this realm 
shall lead. 

We have not yet tried the power of the 
spirit of man enkindled by the law of right. 
Religion, as a practical means of solution for 
the misunderstanding and injustice that loom 
so large in man's relation to man, has been 
given but weak testings here and there by 
individuals and isolated groups. We have 
not been able to test religion for several rea- 
sons — we have not agreed as to what religion 
is: we have come to no unanimous conclusion 
as to whether it is something for the cloister 
or something for the home, the street, the 
nation, the world; we disagree heartily as to 
the terms, the names, the forms, the vocabu- 
laries that express it; those that have clung 
most earnestly to what seem to be its funda- 
mental principles and used them as a guide 
in daily living have not been in places of 
power except in rare instances — men have 
not wanted them there. "You cannot mix 
religion and business," and, "You cannot 
mix religion and politics, " are axioms that 

13 i 



CONFIDENCE THAT DARES DREAM 

end many a heart-searching discussion on 
adventures in the world of spiritual man. 
But the day that is upon us calls for the 
mixing, and the sooner it comes the better for 
the race. > 

The adventurer who undertakes the task 
will need the same power to visualize his 
dream that Marconi had. When there was 
no wireless he saw it, he heard its call over 
dark waters where proud vessels struggled 
with fire or with storm and were doomed. He 
heard the answer, he saw the rescue. 

Laboring alone in his shop, laughed at and 
scoffed at when he mentioned his dream, 
Robert Fulton saw his little boat propelled 
by steam make its way, first hesitantly, then 
confidently, then triumphantly, up the blue 
water of the Hudson. The man who dreamed 
of the airplane saw it in the sky when those 
who doubted kept their eyes upon the ground; 
the men who dreamed of irrigation saw 
deserts transformed into gardens while yet 
the water was hundreds of miles away buried 
in lonely canyons. 

In like fashion, the adventurer in the realm 
of the spirit will see his dream visible, real, 
and at work. He will see it compelling ex- 
ploitation to cease — the exploitation of child- 
hood, of women, of the foreigner, of the 

135 



THE HIGHWAY TO LEADERSHIP 

ignorant, the poor, the weak — and every ex- 
ploiter rendered powerless by public opinion 
aroused to action. He will his dream 

overcoming suspicion, the suspicion which to- 
day is creating havoc with the world. Sus- 
picion is a deadly thing, as hard to fight, as 
difficult to destroy as is superstition in back- 
ward lands. Today suspicion muddies the 

water of pure springs of action. "Mr. W 

has raised the pay of all his employees and 
granted them a good many other privilej 
it was announced this morning, " said a friend 
to the laboring man who sat beside him 
in the trolley. "That so?" said the man. 
"Wonder what's up? Something is behind 

it." "Mrs. L say she's got to go up 

again on the price of her butter,' ' said a 
neighbor. "She says she cannot bear to do 
it and has waited until now hoping she would 
not be forced to, but she's got to do it." 
"Wonder if she expects us to believe it?" 

was the response. "The Rev. Mr. D has 

been down to the shops speaking to the men, 
gave a fine talk at the labor union last night," 
said one young man to another. "Yes, I 
heard he did," was the answer. "Wonder 
what he has up his sleeve." On every side 
one meets suspicion, much of it deep and 
very bitter. Society has been permitting it 

136 



CONFIDENCE THAT DARES DREAM 

to grow rapidly, feeding it and fostering it 
by every sort of propaganda in word and 
deed, but society does not know what to do 
with the fruit of the seed it has sown. One 
thing is certain, but little progress can be 
made in national and international relation- 
ships until the grip of suspicion is loosened. 
The adventurer with the confidence that dares 
dream sees the day when human relationships 
shall be permeated by the fundamental prin- 
ciples of religion, purposes and desires shall 
be plainly stated, ulterior motives defeated 
and diplomacy shall sit around the tables of 
the w^orld working in the clear light of public 
knowledge. It will be a great day! The 
world of the moment does not want it. It 
cannot let go of the old bargainings, secret 
alliances and special privilege. But the 
dreamer desires it with deep desire that will 
not be satisfied until it comes. The same 
force that compelled and impelled men to lay 
the cable, to tunnel the mountains, to bore a 
way through two continents, to search for 
the poles will, in the realm of spirit, drive 
them one day to a realization of the dream. 
Again we turn to youth to see if there are 
in it qualities of leadership for this high task. 
There are. They need cultivation, training 
and direction. 

137 



THE HIGHWAY TO LEADERSHIP 

"I do not want to go into business," said 
a young man to me in a recent conversation, 
"at Least not into the business where I have 
a good opening. I'd like to get down to the 
business of helping people to be right and 
do right, to sort of clean up this old world, 
and I don't know the best way to do it." 

Driving through one of the most over- 
crowded, hopeless, menacing sections of a 
great city, one of the young men in the car 
said simply and with great earnestness, "I'd 
like to get into the game of cleaning this 
thing up. It's all wrong in an intelligent 
country like this. I've thought lately I'd like 
to give my life to it. I've got more income 
than I need to live decently on, but I didn't 
earn it. I'd like to get into this thing and 
sort of invest the income, you might say. I 
don't know just how to start, that's the 
trouble. What ought to be done?" 

I found a young Italian, a college senior, 
teaching a class in Americanization and was 
greatly interested in the way he did it. He 
told me that he is to study law. "I want to 
be a lawyer," he said, "so that some of the 
things that are happening now to foreigners 
cannot happen. I speak some Eussian and 
some Polish. I'm studying both languages. 
Of course I have Italian and English. I 

138 



CONFIDENCE THAT DARES DREAM 

know I won't get rich, and I may be a fool 
as some say I am, but I want to help these 
people and, believe me, they need it. It's 
the only thing I'm interested in." His keen, 
intelligent face convinced me that he will find 
a way to express that interest. 

The number of girls who, in this careless, 
extravagant, pleasure-mad, materialistic mo- 
ment, are eager for social service of every 
sort, willing to endure hardship, to go to all 
quarters of the globe, gives an assurance that 
the qualities of leadership into new adven- 
tures of the spirit where ways shall be found 
to mix religion with life in such a way that it 
shall purify and sweeten it are present in the 
youth of today. For the discovery and train- 
ing of such leadership to whom shall we look 
if the church fails us? It dare not fail; this 
is the hour 1 , of its greatest test. 

The confidence that dares dream is, after 
all, but an intensified form of faith. I do not 
mean the hackneyed word so lightly said, so 
much abused. I mean the vital thing, the 
absolute confidence that God can and man 
can, and that God will and man will, the con- 
fidence that enables one to stand undefeated 
even in the presence of a world's spiritual 
failure and defeat. It is the deep assurance 
which comforted the soul of a young man 

139 



THE HKiHWAY TO LEADERSHIP 

of thirty who lay desperately wounded and 
alone all night in a shell hole while the battle 
roared about him. "I didn't expect to come 

out alive/' he wrote Long afterward. "The 
wound bled profusely and I was very weak. 
I accepted death, I was not afraid, and, 
strangely enough, I was not unwilling to go. 

I knew, as I have never known anything be- 
fore, that God could triumph over the forces 
that had brought all this upon the world. I 
did not seem to count except as a part of that 
great giant man of whom I was conscious — a 
sort of composite man you might say, made up 
of all of us. I knew that man could win over 
the brute and that some day he would. I had 
a deep conviction that God and man together 
in the fight could make the world good — a 
place where man could be happy and enjoy 
life. It was a new faith for me and I must 
keep it. I've got to keep it, for the old way 
of thinking will never satisfy me again. " 

He is typical of many w r ho, these days, in 
the midst of all the turmoil and madness, 
have found something new in religion, some- 
thing deeper and stronger, more truly life- 
giving than they had ever experienced in the 
days when the world went smoothly on in 
accustomed ways. This deep new confidence 
in the purpose and the goal of life is the thing 

140 



CONFIDENCE THAT DARES DREAM 

that is stirring the soul of youth and making 
it dream, not of empire, not of national ag- 
grandizement, not of new machinery to turn 
the wheels of every day, but of new men 
equal to the task of feeding a world spiritually 
starved. 

The confidence that dares dream is giving 
to religion hands and feet, mind and heart, 
making it very simple, very concrete and bid- 
ding it go out from the church to seek the 
breeding-places of greed and destroy them, 
to fight the thing at its source before it does 
its deadly work and secures its victims and 
slaves. 

Despite the sense of disappointment in the 
spiritual conquests won by all the glorious 
sacrifice of the hideous warfare) through which 
we have passed, one finds, as he talks with 
youth, a new faith, a deep conviction that the 
fight with evil is now on indeed and the days 
ahead must see it vanquished. The earnest 
youth who have looked at man's greed, his 
cruelty, his personal sins, vulgar and soul- 
destroying, face to face, on a scale such as 
youth has never been compelled to see them 
before, seem to have come out of it all with 
ai deep sense of fundamental goodness. "Some 
men are bad, too bad through and through 
even to tolerate on the earth," said a young 

1 141 



THE HIGHWAY TO LEADERSHIP 

lad to me as we sat overseas one April morn- 
ing looking down at a prison camp. "But 
more are good. Think of the fellows that 
have come through this clean. Somehow it's 
easier always to see the scum, isn't it?" Yes, 
it is. 

Through a field in which I love to walk 
flows an interesting brook about eight feet 
wide. Before it reaches the field, deposits 
from some vats in a manufacturing plant are 
permitted to flow into it every Saturday noon. 
When I first saw it I was greatly distressed. 
The scum was disgusting and ruined the 
sparkling beauty of the water. But when I 
walked through the field on Sunday the scum 
had gone. The brook flowed rapidly and its 
deep current was clean — it came from hidden 
springs in the hills. The scum was heavy, 
but it could not withstand the power of that 
strong, clean current — it was swept away. 
The confidence that dares dream looks at the 
scum on the surface of the stream of human 
life and knows that the day will come when 
it will be swept away. 

This was the confidence of Jesus Christ. 
No man saw as he saw the sins of the world 
and none trusted as he did the good that his 
keen eyes saw beneath the sin and failure. 
"What man was he saw — what he was to be 

1±2 



CONFIDENCE THAT DARES DREAM 

he saw. So marvelous was the vision that 
he was willing to give up a crown, accept a 
cross, and then challenge men through all 
ages to follow him. That confidence that 
dared dream is in the world and those who 
most fully share it shall in the days ahead 
most truly lead. 

The next great adventure of human society 
must be with the spirit of man, and for that 
adventure we may trust the confidence that 
dares dream. Without it none can hope to 
discover and train true leaders, nor can he 
hope to develop in himself those powers that 
will send him out among his fellows as a 
leader — one who leads. 

Profoundly conscious of God, striving as 
he has through the centuries to express his 
will for the good of mankind everywhere over 
all the earth, one may learn to give in joyous 
abandon and absolute confidence all that he 
is to share in the realization of the dream. 
The day that is will not daunt him, for he will 
see the day that is to be. 



Test the so-called leaders of the past and present by the test of 
"The Confidence That Dares Dream" 

Test those who you think have capacity for leadership. 
Test yourself. 



143 



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